


Improved

by RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Dubious Consent, I question my ethics, M/M, Slavery, Underage 16/29, but here we are, due to dubious free will, every day, instant combustion instead, not a slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2020-04-05 05:15:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19041868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: When humanity discovered the limitations of inorganic technologies, the human genome was improved, giving the specimen access to the full range of abilities of the human mind, including telekinesis and telepathy. To ensure that these Genetically Improved Humans (or just “Improveds”)  weren’t able to go rogue, they were each made with a biological compulsion for the touch and approval of a human link.The forging occurs when the Improveds are sixteen, and usually with a link that has been raised alongside the Improved in the academy on New Earth where all improveds are made.Occasionally a forging goes wrong. That seemed to be the case for TMR, a sixteen-year-old Improved of terrifying talent whose link hung herself two days after they were forged.





	1. Harry

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FermionCat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FermionCat/gifts).



> Thanks to cybrid for beta reading. <3

The transport was scheduled to leave at nightfall; that way passengers could sleep through the ten-hour journey, the only relief from travel in cramped craft with hard seats and mandatory five-point-harness restraints. But Harry couldn’t sleep—he was too anxious. He’d been pulled from the field abruptly and wasn't told why. He’d hoped, now that he’d been out of academy six years, he might even be elevated to the next rank. The promotion would have comes as a relief after three years serving just one rank above entry-level infantry. But that obviously wasn’t the reason for his re-deployment. If he was being sent out as the head of a new unit, he wouldn’t be the only non-civilian on the ship.

Harry got off craft before the civilian class passengers had even woken up. When he stepped into the natural atmosphere, he felt a hint of nausea. He had a strong tolerance after six years of service, but he’d never been to New Earth. His body needed a few moments to calibrate. He waited at the top of the ramp for his stomach to settle and his vision to clear. As it did, he took in his surroundings bit by bit. The air was hot and warm. The massive Fading Sun was grey-silver, emitting a dim white light. It was famous in tales but underwhelming in person.

Then he took in the rest of the landscape: a vivid green sea of grass that was so dense and even, he imagined walking on it would feel like sinking into a cool pillow. The land rose and fell in gentle hills, with stripes of small trees where the plains knitted together to form waterways. Other than the infrastructure for the dock and the silent hovering transport with its sleeping passengers, they might have been on a fertile and unsettled planet. Harry had grown up in dense settlements and artificial biomes. The sight of so much quiet space gave him a feeling of deep-seeded ease, fed more by instinct than experience. Something inside him, much older than memory, recognized its home.

“Morning, Potter,” called a voice, drawing Harry from his reverie. He blinked down at the young pre-Captain assigned to meet him. He recognized her from their comms when they made his travel arrangements. Her dark red hair was neatly braided away from a striking face. She stood at the bottom of the dock with her hands in her pockets.

“Morning, Weasley,” Harry replied with a smile, descending the ramp in a few long strides. Weasley shook his hand. She wore an indicator, which was lit green. Harry was bemused. He had never seen one on someone in uniform, and tried not to blush, instead avoiding a direct look at her throat, the same stilted manner by which he'd try not to stare at an ugly scar. She shot him a quick, sly grin that told him she'd noticed.

“Another transport will be along for the rest of the passengers. I had a feeling you'd be out early." She gestured behind her at a small, sleek craft. Harry rounded it to the passenger side. 

"Thanks, and yes, I couldn't sleep." 

Weasley nodded. "I bet you're functionally immune to the aerosol sedative they disperse on a civilian-grade vessel like this one." 

Harry smiled absently and didn't answer. The question was obviously rhetorical. Anyone with more than a few months of military training would be. The interior of the small craft was glossy and modern. Harry was surprised by the whir of automated restraints, and held awkwardly still as they slid into place. That a craft this extravagant was being used to taxi him in surprised him. Weasley noticed his reaction.

“New Earth isn’t like anywhere else,” she said by way of explanation, getting behind the navigation board and keying in a request for manual controls. “We have the funding of the every other outpost combined, to hear the outside Captains complain. I can deactivate your restraint too, if you’d be more comfortable.”

Harry nodded, relaxing marginally when Weasley touched a command on the panel and the strap across his chest cooled a few degrees as the sensors deactivated. Meanwhile, Weasley maneuvered the manual steering column into position and set the column for a wide grip. 

The rest of Harry's latent tension left him with a sight. Despite all the statistics that told him he shouldn’t, he preferred manual controls to computer navigation. Weasley had a deft, sure way of grasping the steering mechanism and the advance from the ground was commendably steady. On a craft this size, Harry felt the exhilaration of being close to the engine and the outside environment. Through his window he could clearly see the grass rippling from the centrifugal thrust of the engine's various forces. 

They advanced another dozen meters before Weasley built a slow but steady acceleration latitudinally, toward the hazy silhouette of an energy chimney in the distance.

“How long have you been on this post?”

She glanced at him, her automatic smile fading to a thoughtful frown as she considered. “Well, I’m a legacy, so I grew up on post. But if you mean how long have I had officer status here, the answer is five years. I came straight from Satellite.”

Harry nodded. “You’re just a class behind me, then. I thought you looked familiar.”

“You went through with my brother, Ron.”

Harry frowned, trying to think of a Weasley who would have been in his year, but his classes were large and he’d mostly kept his head down. He had no interest in drawing any attention to himself; being neither seen nor heard had served him well throughout his childhood at his aunt and uncle’s. Now it was a habit he couldn’t shake.

“I didn’t have a lot of friends.” It seemed like the closest thing to an honest answer which wouldn’t give offense. Weasley smiled again. It was a nice smile, natural and relaxed, revealing straight teeth and emphasizing her slightly pointed chin. Harry’s glance strayed to her indicator, which was still lit, even after several minutes of semi-awkward small talk. He had no idea what he was doing right.

“That’s what Ron said, when I got this assignment and asked him about you. He also said you were gifted. They thought you’d get recruited to the flyers.”

Harry grimaced. “I was all right," he hedged. The near-miss of flyers recruitment still stung six year later. "It was the only thing I really enjoyed. So I guess I had a lot to pour into it.”

Weasley hummed, and eased back on the column of the craft to land it. Then she looked over at a puzzled Harry with a full-on grin. “We have a little extra time before we’re expected,” she said in a conspiratorial murmur. Harry blinked in startled dismay, and knew that this time he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t staring at the indicator.

“I was going to offer to let you _drive_ ,” said Weasley, laughing. Seeing Harry’s mortified reaction, she restrained her laughter and hastened to add, “But no, really. I bet you don’t get a lot of chances, and I do it so often it’s boring.”

Harry knew from her attitude of reverence in handling the craft that she was far from bored. But he wanted to say yes too badly to argue. They had to de-craft to switch positions; there wasn't room in the cabin. The warm energy of the silent engine made hair rise on the back of Harry's neck, and the grin he shot at Weasley as they passed one another in front of the craft's nose was probably giddy. He slid into the navigation seat, adjusted the column with one hand and buckled himself in with the other at combat-haste speed without even trying. The movements had the ease of an ingrained habit, even if he hadn't flown in several years.

Harry began maneuvering it at an efficient but conservative pace, like Weasley had. Then she reached across the center console dividing them and pinched him hard. He jumped; he could hardly feel her through the thick fabric of his uniform, but still--had _anyone_ ever pinched him? 

"Don't be boring," she demanded. "Show me something cool." 

Harry had never been good at backing down from a challenge. The craft wasn’t meant for dynamic flight, but it was small and high quality; it leapt at his touch and turned at his gesture, guided by the flow and angle of his palms. A smile broke out on his face when Weasley made a whooping sound as he maxed out the craft's internal speed limit to get a feel for it. Just before the bay in the chimney’s shadow, there was a ridge that sloped off abruptly, giving him an excuse to gain a little altitude and then dip back to the south, angling the craft perilously near its tipping point and causing the emergency thrust to kick in, which he utilized to force it into a burst of forbidden speed when it leveled out. They made a rapid, tight lap around the chimney that threw them each hard into the left side of their harnesses. When he looked over, worried he’d overstepped, Weasley was pale but grinning back.

“Not bad, Potter. You’re almost as good as me.”

Harry laughed and fell back into a conservative flight pattern as they circled back to the chimney, letting the craft coast carefully into the bay. The veridian world outside was abruptly replaced with a standard cube of metallic surfaces, and Harry felt the euphoria of the flight leave him. As soon as it did, all the anxiety he'd been wallowing in on the flight in resettled on his shoulders.

The light by the column came on to give him the option of reverting to automatic controls for docking, but Harry ignored it. A manual dock was a delicate business, but he liked the thrill of doing so easily what had once seemed impossible. He eased the craft into place and felt a wave of satisfaction when the anchor slid into place beneath them without so much as a hitch; the only sign they’d connected was a barely-audible click and the automated release that freed their restraints. When Harry looked at Weasley again, he found her perplexed.

“Manual docking? Maybe you _are_ better than me.”

“You’re the one who brought out the manual controls,” Harry reminded her, oddly self-conscious. He hadn’t meant to show off.

When they got off the craft, Weasley’s posture changed, alerting Harry to the Captain’s presence before he saw him.

“Pre-Captains,” said Captain Moody, looking just as terrifying as Harry recalled him from his guest lecture at the academy on Satellite. “Weasley,” he said with a short nod, then turned to Harry. His bionic eye swung around first before its organic counterpart joined it. Harry, unsettled, focused on the natural eye as he reached out to accept the Captain’s wrist-clasp.

“Potter,” said Moody, frowning like Harry's presence was a surprise. As though he hadn’t been the one to summon Harry there. “I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into.”

Harry didn’t, actually. He frowned back at Moody. “Captain, I was only told I'd been flagged for an unspecified consult.”

Moody's bionic eye spun briefly toward Weasley and back again. After a stilted pause Moody barked a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “Please, tell me you’re joking.”

Weasley looked distressed. She touched Harry’s arm. “Are you joking?”

Harry stared back and forth between them, his cheeks hot. He hated the feeling of not knowing the score. “No,” he said slowly, drawing out the vowel and now wondering if _they_ were joking. It wouldn’t be the first time he was late on the uptake.

“He must not have gotten the report,” Weasley said to Moody. 

“There was no report,” Harry said with rising dread. “Just the order. I assumed I was here for relief staffing.” That would be par for the course with Harry’s service. His habit of invisibility meant that he was shuffled around a lot. Everyone got along with him but no one was loathe to part with him.

“No, Potter,” said Weasley quietly. “You’re here to be evaluated for forging.”

Harry just looked at her for several beats. He had never considered himself a candidate for forging, and therefore he hadn’t daydreamed about it as some young people did. So he had no emotional reference point. He wasn’t sure whether to be excited or terrified. Pragmatism won out in the end.

“No,” he said. Moody was focused across the middle distance, but the bionic eye continued to stare. The result made Harry’s head hurt so he looked at Weasley instead. “I’m too old.” Weasley just met his eye with a patient expression and waited for him to work out the answer on his own. Forgings occurred when Improveds were sixteen, with similarly-aged links. The only thing that broke a link was death, as far as Harry knew, but if a link died it was rare for the bonded Improved to survive. Still, it could happen, and there was no other explanation for Harry's presence here. “So this is for a reforging?”

Weasley and Moody exchanged a swift look. “Not exactly,” said Moody. “Come now, Potter. We’ll show you the report.”

Harry felt the particular, miserable tension of not understanding. He tried not to let too much of his inner turmoil show on his face as he fell into step alongside Weasley, a few paces behind Moody. They walked through the shadowy sterility of the bay, then through a vacuum chamber into the true interior of the silo.

New Earth’s superior budget was on display again. There were dozens of false windows in the vaulted space, giving the impression they walked through a tower rather than the first subterranean level of a structure extending deep underground. Harry was too distracted to appreciate any of it, however. The stunning vistas of the green plains, transposed here as though seen from high above, didn’t earn more than a distracted glance.

“It’ll be alright, Potter,” said Weasley encouragingly. “It’s an honor, you know. I know you're surprised, but it's a _good_ surprise.”

“Hmm,” said Harry, sweeping a finger down the bridge of his nose to adjust glasses that weren’t there any longer, an old habit. “I’m certainly surprised,” he allowed, then bit his lip.

“The report will explain a lot,” she assured him, but her eyes were shadowed. “And Moody’ll answer your questions after, if you still have any.”

They entered a lift which closed them off from the manufactured view and cavernous dimensions of the main column. After they descended, they emerged out into a wide, tubular hallway, which was still softly illuminated to give the semblance of natural light.

Moody keyed open a chamber just a few paces from the lift, and gestured for Harry and Weasley to precede him inside. There was a table, a depressed place on the wall that was probably the hologram space, and an impressive selection of pastries and warm drinks.

“We thought you’d be hungry,” Weasley explained. She pulled out a chair for Harry and he was helpless against the compulsion to be polite, so he sat in it. “Do you want me to stay?”

Harry had the wild urge to demand that _she_ tell him what he’d prefer, since he had absolutely no idea what the report even contained. Weasley's insistence that this was an honor--a "good surprise"--felt contradictory to the way she was looking at him now, like he was about to be asked to identify the body of a friend or family member. As always, though, Harry's urge to accommodate, rather than inconvenience, was too strong to resist. He shook his head with a dismissive gesture and watched her walk out.

Moody was activating the hologram on the wall. Harry swallowed a wave of nausea, shoving the nearest plate of cookies as far away as possible. The hologram wavered into life, generating an image of a startlingly handsome young man, with flawless fair skin stretched over pronounced cheekbones, hooded dark eyes, and a severe set of black eyebrows which emphasized the elegant arch of his smooth brow. His chin had the hint of a dimple. His full lower lip was captured protruding slightly in a smirk.

A narrator’s voice, one that Harry recognized as a military standard, emanated from a speaker in the table. “Subject is TMR, in his sixteenth year of life, genetically and hormonally male, latent potential beyond definition.”

Moody stopped the feed by pointing at it and then looked quizzically at Harry. “Do you know the Broad Scale?”

Harry knew it existed and that was all, so he settled for an uncomfortable shrug. Moody pointed again and the screen showed a wide three-dimensional chart that gave Harry an immediate headache. Then Moody rattled off a few more commands and the image switched to a simple two-dimensional graph showing the correlation between the population of Improveds and strength of their abilities. At the far right of the graph, past the ninety-ninth percentile which were indicated as “mapped G10” was a narrow blue arrow, beneath which some fine print read, simply, “beyond.”

“Forged Moon 9, Day 13. Forging did not settle; after period of convalescence, link stabilized. But upon release, emotional health of link swiftly declined. Before staged intervention could commence, link self-terminated.”

Harry’s eyes widened. Looking at the young man’s image, he felt a wave of pity. He had rudimentary knowledge of Improveds, to be honest, but everyone knew that devotion to their link was embedded within them. It must have been a devastating loss, even so early in the process.

“Subject psychological narrative,” continued the narrator tonelessly, and the image of a stationary TMR was replaced with recorded images of TMR in what looked very much like Harry’s dormitories at school, with unfamiliar youth around TMR’s age milling around him.

“Narcissistic; emotional IQ low; cognitive IQ high. Violent tendencies. Link chosen according to criterion 67.”

Where TMR and his peers had been, criterion 67 appeared. The narrator read the text aloud, as though for emphasis.

“The violent and mildly sociopathic Improved is best partnered with a link of stable personality and viability as a sexual partner.”

Harry, who rarely thought about sex with other people, had thought about it much more than he cared to today.

“TMR is pansexual,” the narrator supplied. “System _does_ have sufficiently detailed profile content to generate likely viability as sexual partner along with biological-link compatibility, given a DNA sample and brain scan.”

Harry, horrified, distinctly recalled being subjected to an unexpected brain scan recently, and handing over a hair follicle as he filed out. He had assumed it was a new protocol, and hadn’t questioned it. Harry was very good at following orders without thinking about them very hard.

“First forge: female, first class, sixteen years aged. Settlement period: unknown. Forge terminated when link self-terminated, and bond had not fully settled at such time.”

Another image appeared, this one of a pretty blond teenager Harry thought of at once as an attractive contrast to TMR. Then he berated himself for even fleetingly connecting the concept of attraction to this report.

“Protocol 91 applies,” said the narrator. Anticipating correctly that Harry hadn't had the hundreds of Improved management protocols memorized since he was a bored primary school student, the full text of the procol flashed up on the screen.

“Protocol 91: incomplete forging. Unlike a reforging, which is not time-sensitive, replacing an incomplete forging due to incompatibility, failure of the bond to settle, or premature death of a newly-bonded link must be prompt. The Improved is likely to be lost for want of a bond if not successfully forged within seventy-two hours of the original forging's disruption, assuming prompt transition to stasis.”

Harry observed an image of TMR in stasis, his arms, legs, and hairless white chest bare, his modesty preserved by a folded blanket. His face looked almost unearthly, softened in repose, the chamber’s glass softening all the sharpness from his features.

“Subject TMR has been in stasis forty-six hours and was genetically incompatible with three presented candidates, making him eligible for pairing with a nontraditional candidate selected from a pool pre-tested for viability. Brain scan compatibility being of utmost importance as TMR had violent emotional opposition to first link. TMR has been granted a history-based risk score of Z and an asset-potential value of 10, triggering protocol 100.”

Harry sat up straighter in his chair and felt all the blood draining from his face, leaving him chilled. Even he remembered protocol 100, these many years later, and it was playing through his memory even before it flashed on the screen.

“Protocol 100: the Z10 link will be granted the supreme privilege upon consignment.”

* * *

Before Harry could make an official decision, he had to meet TMR.

The Technicians took TMR out of stasis under protest, but in the end they didn’t have a lot to lose. Harry would either agree, or they would terminate TMR anyway. And Harry made it clear that meeting the boy was a condition of his agreement. Since they hadn’t time to spare, Harry was sitting outside the cryogenic chamber when TMR opened his eyes and sat up as swiftly as, and with the natural tension of, a cat. Harry hadn’t spent much time around raw Improveds, or any Improveds at all, so the ease with which the boy transitioned from stasis to consciousness startled him.

“Who are you?” demanded TMR. He was looking Harry over with an assessing air, much more composed than he had any right to be. According to the reports as embellished by Moody, he knew very well that his link had hung herself in the lavatory and he was likely to be scheduled for imminent termination.

“Pre-captain Potter,” Harry said, then added belatedly, “Harry.” The boy’s eyes were brighter than the hologram had let on. In that image, they’d seemed almost black, but here, boring into Harry’s, they were more obviously brown, a rich burnished-gold color, alight with dangerous intelligence. Harry swallowed and felt his heartbeat stutter. Maybe he shouldn’t have been so skeptical about the results of that brain scan.

“Then you’re the candidate. They wouldn’t let you in here with me on your own, otherwise.” TMR put his head to one side and leaned back on his hands, which tightened all the muscles in his lower torso that disappeared beneath the towel. 

He smirked when he saw Harry notice. “Of course you are,” he said more softly, almost purring, and angled his hips toward Harry so that the towel very nearly slipped away, just catching on the sharp angle of his jutting hip-bone. “Aren’t you a lucky boy?”

The last word broke Harry out of his mesmerized stare, and he looked TMR in the eye and glared. “I’m not the _boy_ here,” he said through gritted teeth. Inadvertently, he reminded _himself_ of TMR's youth as well, and was uncomfortable all over again. Human or otherwise, Harry couldn't reconcile being so drawn to someone who was only sixteen. Harry knew vaguely that people tended to objectify Improveds, since they tended to be physically perfect and consequently appealing. But Harry couldn’t restrain the notion that it was wrong to see TMR that way. He was technically a child. Worse, he was legally subordinate to Harry. 

“I want you to take part in the decision of whether we should be forged,” Harry said, reverting to an even tone. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

TMR looked surprised, then he examined Harry more carefully, absently straightening the towel over his groin, to Harry’s relief. If it dropped all the way to the floor an awkward situation would be made ten times worse.

“You’ll do,” TMR decided. “Although—and I don’t intend any offense—I would be hard-pressed to turn any candidate down, considering. It’s literally life or death for me, you know.” He smiled slyly. “What about you?” he purred. “Anything I can do to convince you?”

Harry hastily held up a restraining hand. “No,” he said, but he was watching TMR’s parted lips and had to blink to break his focus. “Like you said, it’s life or death. So I’ll do it. But I couldn’t decide for both of us.”

TMR’s amusement mixed with something else. “We’ve decided then,” he said, reclining back on the hard surface of the chamber platform as though it was a featherbed. “I’m all yours.” He winked. Harry refused to let a kid make him blush, but it was still a close call.

The Captains separated Harry from TMR for the formal consent, just in case of undue influence, though they kept assuring Harry that wouldn’t be possible underground. Harry didn’t care to ask what TMR _would_ be capable of when they _were_ above ground. Presumably, the forging would ensure that Harry could control him. Though, Harry had a hard time imagining a subordinate version of the smug teenager he’d just met, his careless attitude unfazed even by the threat of death should Harry refuse him.

The forging was scheduled for the next day, and Harry was given a barracks to himself, which was a strange feeling and, he realized, an indicator of his changed status.

Within an hour of staring blankly at the walls and wishing for sleep that wouldn’t come, he heard someone buzz the door. Harry went to answer, puzzled. The military culture on New Earth was more relaxed than Harry was used to, but it was borderline misconduct for a Captain to visit the barracks.

It wasn’t Moody on the other side of the door, though; it was pre-Captain Weasley.

“Want to blow off some steam?” she asked, grinning. She wore a flight jacket with a high collar, but her leggings and footwear were casual.

“Are you off duty?” Harry said, startled into the non-reply. Weasley laughed.

“Yes, Potter, and so are you. We’re off every evening after end-of-duty tasks. Welcome to New Earth.”

“I should have asked for a transfer ages ago,” Harry joked, reaching for his coat where it hung on a peg next to the door. “I only have uniforms,” he added apologetically, glancing down at his flight suit, which was his default in the evenings since it was the most comfortable of all of them.

Weasley followed his gaze. “You look fine. Good, even. And even better when you blush. Fuck’s sake, Potter, are you even half as innocent as you act?”

Harry tousled his hair, a nervous habit, and smiled wryly. The words that came out of Weasley’s mouth would put him on the defensive if almost anyone else said them, but there was something about her that made it impossible to take offense.

“At least half,” he assured her. Her laughter was still ringing out through the corridors after he shrugged into his jacket and followed her out. Weasley navigated the dense grid of identical hallways with the ease of someone practically born and raised in the facility. When they arrived at a large sealed door marked “external,” Harry frowned at her in surprise.

“Surely we’re in the wrong place?”

“Not at all,” Weasley replied, grinning. “After you.”

Harry grimaced, but couldn’t contain his curiosity. What could be outside an _underground_ facility, after all? He stepped forward cautiously and the doors swept open as they sensed him coming near, revealing a yawning, dark cavern filled with a rushing-water sound.

“Go on,” Weasley encouraged him, raising her voice to be heard. “Trust me, I wouldn’t take a candidate somewhere they could so much as stub their toe. Go!” She punctuated this last command with a playful shove, and Harry relented and walked past the threshold. The cold, clean air was like a slap to the face, and the cushion of the standard walking surface in the facility transitioning to the rough hardness of stone.

Above them the sound of the water echoed off a stalactite-studded ceiling like wind, yawning space spreading around them like a dark, vast bubble. The door slid closed behind them, sealing them in.

“Don’t look so worried. It’s perfectly safe,” Weasley assured him. “We didn’t even have to pick a lock, did we? Or go through a vacuum?” She brushed past him to lead the way, and as the darkness surrounded her two illuminating patches lit up on the shoulders of her jacket.

Harry followed her cautiously, but his heart was beating hard with the excitement of doing something truly on-planet. He didn’t have much experience, since his aunt and uncle had raised him “safely” away from inhabitable atmospheres in the sterility of the industrial space station between Earth and Mars. And though he'd been enlisted six years, he’d never been assigned to a combat zone.

Although, that was likely to change, now that—

The ground sloped and Harry stumbled, knocking into Weasley who rotated on the spot, catching him with a strong, lean arm and laughing close to his ear.

“You can’t stay inside your head on an adventure, or you’ll fall on your face,” she said, then propped him up, leaving him warm and blinking, and set off again. She added over her shoulder, “Also, getting out of your head is the fucking point of an adventure. Come on, Potter.”

“You swear a lot,” Harry observed, paying more attention to the footing as he continued to walk close behind her to take advantage of the illumination patches. She hummed to acknowledge that he’d spoken and, presumably, to emphasize that what he’d said didn’t merit a response. When they got to the bottom of the slope, the stone was wet. A massive and furious underground waterfall crashed over the opposite ledge, filling the air with dense mist. Weasley grinned at him, undid her belt and stepped out of her pants.

“Weasley,” Harry began, shocked, and she paused to arch an eyebrow at him, then slid the rest of the way out of her jacket and let it pool at her feet. The light angled up to show her smooth, long calf in brilliant relief; he could have counted her freckles from where he stood.

“Come on, Potter,” she said, “I’ve seen you ogling my indicator. And even if you don’t want to do anything other than to ogle my naked body as well, that’s fine with me. I’m only here for a swim; anything else is extra.” She wriggled out of her underwear and suddenly the patches were lighting her up in an impossibly lewd way. Harry, fascinated, couldn’t look away.

He shucked off his own clothes almost as quickly as she had but with far less grace, and after she winked at him and dove nimbly off the ledge, tumbled after her. It wasn’t until he stepped into thin air that he realized that the water was quite far below them, and some sort of underwater phosphorescence cast the water in a thousand patches of neon blue and pink, mingling together into green where they met. When he broke the surface and went under, his own velocity forced him down close to the source of the light.

It was some sort of lichen with long, trailing vines. Schools of fish burst out of hiding at the disturbance. The water was shockingly warm. Harry rolled over back toward the surface, having taken an insufficiently deep breath just before his impulsive leap. As he turned, he saw Weasley’s long, elegant limbs treading water above him.

When he crested, Weasley was looking at him. “What do you say, Potter? Want to do more than look?” She inched nearer, and he felt her knee nudge his hip. He nodded slowly, and she grinned and put her legs around his waist, making him tread furiously to keep them both buoyant. She balanced them with a slowly paddling arm, then reached between them with her free hand to seize his already hard cock.

He’d been in a state of semi-hardness most of the day, somehow. Earlier, he’d blamed it on Weasley’s indicator, but mostly her letting him fly the craft. It had felt like waking up from a long dream. And then all the shocks of TMR, particularly the way he had acted, spoken, and _looked_ during their brief time in person . . . 

Harry nearly tipped over backwards when Weasley stroked him, and, both laughing, they broke apart.

“This seemed like a very sexy idea,” she said, looking around in mock-disappointment. “Underwater sex is _very_ hot in novels.”

“So you don’t bring _all_ the nontraditional candidates here?”

She glared at him, but obviously took no offense. “No, Potter. You’re very special. Follow me.” She ducked underwater and was gone, and Harry filled his lungs and followed her. The bottoms of her feet seemed appealingly pink, her toes a bit long and crooked, as she swam with a fish’s efficiency ahead of Harry. Several times he fell so far behind she slowed and looked back, then waited for him to catch up. By the fifth or sixth time this happened, Harry’s lungs burned; when he pointed at the surface questioningly she rolled her eyes and swam on.

Finally, she began to swim _up_ , and when they did surface they were on the backside of the waterfall, and a slippery carpet of shorter-stranded, bright blue lichen formed a spongy beach.

“Is this stuff safe?” Harry asked, already following her lead and pressing the heels of his hands against the lichen-furred ledge to lever himself up. He was almost shouting to be heard over the pounding water.

In answer, Weasley spread her legs and hooked an ankle around his thigh to drag him up between them.


	2. TMR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to my loves, mith and cybrid, for beta reading. <3

When TMR was in stasis, he dreamed in a three-dimensional space. It was curious, since he was used to being able to roam as far as he liked in the dream plane, but not particularly unpleasant. The limitations eliminated distraction, and he could focus on the fact that he would soon be together with his link at last.

Was this how ordinary humans dreamed, TMR wondered? He had never cared to ask, but now he found himself curious, as he walked through foggy scenes built of memory alone, the figures of people and objects shifting and morphing the longer he looked at them.

The only one with any integrity was the image of his false link. Perhaps that was because she’d been tied to him so deeply he wouldn’t escape her so easily. She looked at him tearily from the other side of a transparent partition, which she couldn’t break through no matter how she tried.

TMR watched her bloody her hands against the wall, smearing it red and pink, her mouth parted around cries he could not hear. He felt nothing but irritation.

Her death was on them. Not that he would mind the blame, but it wasn’t his to claim. They never should have shackled him to a link so false. Not when his destiny lay elsewhere.

* * *

The dream terminated abruptly when they brought TMR out of stasis. Technicians in uniform, all of them familiar. The people who had watched him grow with clinical interest, who had charted and measured his brain with curiosity rather than horror after the false link’s termination. He preferred them to the soldiers, whose righteous indignation was more tiresome than amusing.

But the face he searched for in the crowd was Harry’s. He saw him there, toward the back of the room, and when their eyes met TMR called for him. “Harry.” He resisted the urge to reach out with more than a hand. He knew Harry wouldn’t object, but he didn’t want to invite the Technicians’ interference.

Harry crossed the room, looking tense and uncertain. TMR looked up at him, noting the startling brilliance of his green eyes. Harry rested his hand on the edge of the bed, obviously uncertain. TMR shifted his own so that their fingers brushed. A wave of satisfaction rolled through TMR and Harry’s eyes widened at the reciprocal feeling.

“Is the link active?” Harry asked one of the Technicians. She turned an absent frown toward him, then quickly returned to the chart she was monitoring.

“No,” was her distracted answer.

The senior Technician pointed to a few figures on the primary chart that wouldn’t make any sense to Harry, but which represented TMR’s neural anatomy. “All we’ve done so far is map you, pre-Captain. We’ll reconfigure TMR here and here, which will create the right environment for matching. Then we’ll add your unique neural signature to his receptor, and the link should take nicely.”

“Then all you’re going to do to him is what you did to me?” Harry seemed relieved. He glanced down briefly at TMR with a hesitant, but reassuring smile. “That wasn’t so bad. A little claustrophobic, but it didn’t hurt at all.”

TMR squeezed Harry’s hand. “They only mapped you,” he said. One of the Technicians gave him a reproving look, but they were used to TMR being more talkative than the rest of his class, so no one else bothered to react.

“The reconfiguration is more intrusive, but won’t take long,” said the senior Technician, then frowned at Harry. “Haven’t you reviewed the manual?”

“Some of it,” Harry muttered. The Technician exhaled sharply through her nose.

“Most candidates spend years learning about the consequences of a link,” she said, lowering her voice. She glanced over her shoulder toward the partition, on the other side of which TMR assumed the officers were waiting. “You don’t _have_ to do this, you know.”

TMR felt a jolt of unease, but before it could settle in Harry answered her in a firm voice..

“I’m doing it.”

The Technician studied him another moment, then shrugged.

“It’s your life.”

“What did you mean by ‘intrusive’?” Harry pressed.

“It will be very uncomfortable, but brief. TMR has been through it before, but seems relaxed enough,” the Technician said, at last looking directly at TMR. She made eye contact, but only to gauge his mood. Her demeanor seemed troubling to Harry, which was charming. TMR was only relieved no one was asking him how he _felt_. The educator class of Technician tended to have some of those, and he detested them most of all.

Still, Harry’s concern was different. It endeared where anyone else’s would have grated. Like anyone in his class, TMR had done his fair share of experimenting in this regard, but there wasn’t an experience in his memory that compared to the excitement of even simple touches with Harry. He thought ahead to what would take place after the forging and wet his lips.

“I’ll be right here,” Harry told him solemnly. He was standing so close TMR could feel the faint radiation of his body heat; he was startlingly warm. Even for an Improved, TMR’s circulation had always been poor. He had the urge to wrap himself around Harry like a snake on a hot stone. For now, though, he made himself lie still. He recalled from his last forging that “very uncomfortable” was an understatement, but the reward at the end of the procedure was easily worth a few minutes of agony, this time.

“We’ll put him under for the mapping,” said the senior Technician, then looked to her right toward a Technician who approached with restraints dangling from her hand. “Last time he was uncooperative, so we’ll add the restraints to be safe.”

“I don’t think…” Harry began.

“It’s fine,” TMR interrupted him, not that complaining would have stopped the Technicians. He hated the idea of their flimsy shackles, but not enough to delay being alone with Harry, which wouldn’t happen until the Technicians did their procedures.

When TMR’s arms and waist were secured to the bed frame, one of them picked up his arm and thrust a needle into it. He grit his teeth and looked at Harry. The wrinkle between his eyebrows and his worried frown were his last sight before TMR went under.

* * *

TMR dreamed of Harry. He remembered this—the dreams—from his first procedure, when he’d fallen asleep still fighting the Technicians. He couldn’t stop himself. Helplessness had always been the one feeling he couldn’t bear, and how could he be more at the mercy of his keepers than when he was unconscious, strapped down, with them literally in his head?

But this time it was no matter. Harry was with him.

He’d known it would be this way when they were finally together: not the girl, that cheap imitation of a link, but his true match. Still, it was one thing to _know_ , and another to _see_. They’d barely touched, but TMR was hungry to taste and feel everything he saw. The messy waves in Harry’s hair; the curious dark freckles on his sun-bronzed skin which ordinary human vision wouldn’t have been able to detect. His vivid green eyes and the shape of his mouth, the dense stubble on his chin.

In the dream he and Harry were walking in tall alien trees where there was no path. Above them the cosmos hung close in a strange pattern—two moons, and the dull gleam of an enormous dying sun.

Harry held his hand and his thumb rubbed over TMR’s knuckles. It was a slight, slow pressure: it could not be seen, only felt. A secret touch. TMR felt alive in a way he never had, his life rich with possibilities as numerous as the stars, but much less far.

Then the ground grew muddy underfoot, a stinging moisture that burned TMR’s feet. Within moments it wasn’t mud, but rising water, ankle-deep. TMR hissed and stepped closer to Harry — but Harry wasn’t there. TMR controlled the impulse to panic. The pain wouldn’t harm him, nor would it last long. He reminded himself of that as the scalding wave rose to his hips, his chest, and finally rolled over his head so that every inch of his body was aflame.

* * *

When TMR woke, Harry was not in the room. And the distance was _wrong,_ to an unacceptable degree, so TMR tore his arms from the feeble restraints he still wore. He felt a crack and sharp pain when he dislocated his shoulder, but only grimaced and yanked at the needle taped to his inner arm connecting him to the IV.

Just like that, TMR was no longer alone. There were the Technicians of course, and the hideous officer with the absurd bionic eye, and one of the Weasley horde, easily identified by her garish orange hair.

They were a blur; he dismissed them all. He only wanted Harry, who he saw at once—even standing near the back of the group and no taller than anyone else. He looked unsure, but concerned. A tiny wrinkle was visible between his dark, arched brows.

“Harry.” Despite the commotion in the room Harry clearly heard, but he didn’t _move_. “Harry!” TMR repeated more loudly, and batted aside a Technician. Her body made a loud noise when she hit the wall, and another when she hit the floor. TMR absently recalled that they would have removed the last of the inhibitors when they performed the procedure. He had his full physical strength at last.

“Just, er, let me…”

Harry’s voice. Harry, coming toward him. TMR grimaced at the shooting pain in his shoulder, but it meant nothing weighed against the sight of Harry, in reach at last. He held out a hand, recalling the dream, but Harry just looked at it like he didn’t understand, and then frowned at the angle at which TMR’s other arm hung from his shoulder.

“He’s hurt himself,” Harry told the room, but they were all still fussing over the Technician. All of them, that is, except for the one-eyed Captain, who was leveling a stun gun at TMR’s heart with a scowl that did not improve his already unpleasant visage.

“He’ll live,” said the Captain shortly, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

TMR’s dreams were boundless once more. He still felt close to Harry, but Harry was like an anchor from which TMR could travel a great distance while still feeling the link. He did so, stretching skyward, then into a space where there was no such thing as sky.

 _You have him_ , said the voice, which TMR recognized as his own, though it also came from outside of him in a way it only did when he dreamt.

 _Yes,_ TMR agreed with fervent delight. Here emotion was something he could bathe in, and he had never felt such deep, warm satisfaction. It was dizzying. But after a few moments he felt an undercurrent of restlessness.

 _Then it is time_ , said the voice.

 _Yes_ , TMR agreed once more, but his next thought was that he didn’t know exactly what it was time for. His mysterious destiny, he supposed; that sure, distant and intensely magnetic force of which he’d been cognizant of for as long as he could remember.

 _Yes_.

* * *

The next time TMR woke up, he and Harry were finally alone.

TMR glanced around the room to assess it. It was a private sleeping chamber, which was rare anywhere on New Earth, and it looked very similar to the one where he’d woken up with his false link. But she had been slumped over in a chair next to his bedside. Harry, however, was lying beside TMR.

They weren’t touching; Harry had carefully arranged himself so that he was on his back and just out of range of TMR’s curved arm and bent knee.

Harry was also asleep, which meant that TMR could freely study him. He looked older when he was relaxed like this, his uncertainty eased, his expression relaxed. His coarse stubble had a patch of gray over a scar on his chin. He had no other silver hair, not even on his temples. When TMR raked the thick strands back from Harry’s face, the waves parted in soft, silky waves, warm between TMR’s cool fingers.

Recalling his impulse from earlier, before the procedure, TMR rolled into Harry’s heat. He slung one thigh over Harry’s, slipped his arm around Harry’s waist, and put his cheek on Harry’s shoulder. He shuddered at the joy of the contact, surrendering to it happily as the link poured a sense of well-being into the depths of his bones. It was like a drug, and sleepy with it, he didn’t realize for several long moments that Harry was waking up.

He felt Harry’s breath on the crown of his head, and his heart pounded with joy at the feeling of Harry’s hand settling on his forearm and gently rubbing, an unconscious gesture. Then, as Harry woke fully and took note of their positions, his entire body went immediately tense.

TMR sighed with displeasure, the perfect happiness of the link a moment before dissolving into vague discomfort, and extricated himself from Harry with a combination of haste and reluctance. Haste because as soon as they weren’t touching, Harry’s instinctive, negative response toned down and the unpleasantness in the link declined in concert. Reluctance because even without reinforcement from the link, Harry was warm and firm and luscious to touch.

TMR shifted over until he was lying on his stomach, then pillowed his head on his arms and looked at Harry.

Harry looked back, eyes wide and anxious, half-lifted on one elbow. He still wore his standard-issue uniform, including his boots. TMR wore the lightweight jumpsuit they’d put him in for the procedure, and his feet were bare. He saw that Harry was trying not to study the lines of his body, clearly visible through the thin fabric.

“A Technician should be coming soon,” Harry murmured. “To check on you. How do you feel?” He lifted a hand, as though to touch TMR, but instead it hovered in midair a moment then fell back to his side, to TMR’s disappointment.

So TMR reached out and took that unoccupied hand, threading their fingers together, and smiled at the pleasure of the contact. Harry didn’t resist, so the link hummed with absent pleasure, and TMR closed his eyes and let it warm him like a solar simulator.

“You like that,” Harry noticed. “I knew that you would, but it seems different to really see it.” He stroked the heel of TMR’s hand with his thumb, and TMR shuddered. He opened his eyes again and saw that Harry’s gaze was riveted on their joined hands, the contrast of their skin tones, how TMR’s fingers were longer and leaner and hairless compared to Harry’s.

“Isn’t it in the manual?” TMR asked, only half-teasing. He was too absorbed by even this subtle activity in the link.

Harry snorted, glancing up briefly, a flash of green eyes. His eyelashes were long, slightly curled, dark from root to tip so they made the color of his eyes stand out even more in contrast. “It’s common knowledge. I still need to spend some time with the manual.”

TMR considered the implications, then asked carefully, “So you haven’t read it?”

“It’s two million pages,” Harry said, sounding a little sour, but though TMR braced himself, there was no negativity in the link. He relaxed again.

“I could pass it to you,” he suggested, voice deliberately mild.

“What?” Harry looked puzzled, and TMR’s pulse quickened. Harry truly knew very little about the link. That would change, surely, when the Technicians got to him. But for now…

“I can internalize it and pass it to you through the link,” TMR said simply. “It would only take a few minutes.”

Harry looked interested, then cautious. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why wouldn’t they have suggested that, if it’s so easy?”

TMR shrugged. “It’s not a perfect solution. You’ll have better comprehension if you learn it properly. But candidates have years for that, and we’re already forged. Don’t you want to understand more about us?”

Harry’s uneasiness was making TMR itch, so he pulled his hand away, pleased when Harry seemed the slightest bit reluctant to relinquish the touch.

“Captain Moody told me that all I needed to do for now was stay close to you, and that in a worst-case scenario, you’d listen to me if I meant what I said,” Harry said. “The Technicians will be here soon, and we can ask about you...passing to me, or however you put it.”

TMR frowned, thinking fast. “Maybe you shouldn’t say anything,” he murmured, letting a haunted look pass over his face, and glanced up at Harry then quickly away to stare pensively at the blank white wall he was facing.

“Why not?” Harry asked. “Isn’t that what the Technicians do? Manage links?”

“I…” TMR trailed off, waited a beat, then went on at a measured pace. “They’ve always wanted me to be less...interactive.” He gauged Harry’s reaction out of the corner of his eye, and when he saw Harry’s troubled frown, TMR went on. “Since I’m only a slave, after all.” He turned his face away and waited.

“That’s ridiculous,” Harry said, seething disdain very evident in his tone. “An Improved is our greatest resource. Improveds put themselves at risk to do what no one else could. You deserve to be honored.”

TMR listened with satisfaction to all of the words he knew described humanity’s official position on his race, then let out a little hiccup. “Not everyone sees us that way.”

Within a moment, he felt Harry’s hand, tentative between his shoulder blades. “ _I_ see you that way,” he said softly. “I don’t want a _slave_.” He spat the word. “Anyone who’s made you feel like one is wrong.”

“Technician Cole…” TMR didn’t have to feign his shudder. “She wouldn’t agree with you.”

Harry went abruptly still, and TMR felt his angry tremble. Then his hand moved in a warm circle over TMR’s back. Bliss.

“I won’t say anything,” he promised. “You have nothing to worry about.”

TMR, face safely hidden, smiled. In so many ways, Harry exceeded his wildest hopes.

* * *

Technician Cole came in with her perpetual frown a couple hours later. When she rang the chime, Harry leapt out of bed like he was doing something he shouldn’t. TMR had been dozing, and slowly sat up with a fixed expression as the Senior Educational Technician came in, wearing her mauve uniform and carrying her ridiculously old-fashioned clipboard with its several sheets of blank paper. For TMR’s entire life, she’d always been meticulously prepared for manual note-taking but never wrote down a single thing.

“Pre-captain,” she said, with a nod toward Harry. Then she turned her small, sharp eyes on TMR. “And hello to you, TMR. I’m relieved to see that the officers found a suitable alternate link for you.”

Her voice conveyed absolutely no relief, or any other emotion at all. TMR smiled placidly at her. Harry was watching them closely, and TMR wanted to be sure he came off as the victim rather than the instigator.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Harry said. “I really don’t have much information, except that the link is still fragile.”

TMR reined in the urge to snort. The link was perfect, solid, and powerful. But it wouldn’t benefit him to point that out.

“Well, I intend to do all I can to put you at ease. Including requesting a consult from an officer who, like you, is the second link for her Improved.”

Even TMR was surprised at that. He knew to whom she referred. It was something everyone learned about in his class, because it was the only recorded occasion where an Improved survived the death of their established link.

“I appreciate that,” said Harry. “So it’s quite different than being the first?”

“In your case, less so,” said the Technician. She was a tall, heavily built woman, and she was frowning doubtfully at the relatively feeble-looking chair by the door. When she decided not to sit in it, she redirected her gaze back to Harry. “The first link never settled with TMR. So he shouldn’t have too much related trauma. How do you feel, TMR?” she looked at her clipboard, toyed with her pen.

“Excellent,” TMR said, smiling at Harry. “Much better than last time.”

Harry, adorably, seemed to be struggling with the impulse to feel flattered by that comment, while aware the suitable reaction was solemnity considering the fate of TMR’s false link.

“And your grief?” the Technician added pointedly.

TMR’s gaze snapped to hers. She was looking at him steadily. Knowingly. TMR swallowed.

“Manageable.”

Harry looked at TMR with sympathy, and the feeling of it in the link made TMR’s skin crawl.

“I think I’ve forgotten some of it. Perhaps a neurological reaction to the...trauma.” He forced himself to use the word, inwardly rolling his eyes. But then again, it had been mildly traumatic, that unwanted invasion, the worst kind of indignity. He’d liberated himself fairly quickly, of course, but the memories of those brief days would haunt him for some time if he let himself think of them.

“I see,” said the Technician coolly, and looked back down at her blank papers. Harry, TMR noticed, was unimpressed by what to him seemed an unfeeling regard. TMR relaxed against the pillows.

“Under criterion 67, physical intimacy is recommended. Have you…?” she looked from one of them to the other, then frowned. “No? I see.” She had her pen poised over the paper as though she might finally mar the blank surface, then pulled it away. “There’s no need for self-consciousness, pre-Captain.” She sounded faintly amused, so TMR scowled at her on Harry’s behalf.

“I’m not,” Harry muttered, stealing a quick glance at TMR. “But he’s so...young.”

TMR blinked. For once, he seemed to be experiencing a similar reaction to Technician Cole, who looked equally perplexed.

“The age of consent is not an issue with an Improved,” she said slowly. “And even if it were, TMR is not capable of feeling adverse to your desires.”

TMR had opinions about that, but he knew by now when to keep them to himself. Anyway, in Harry’s case it might be true. He looked thoughtfully at Harry’s arms, which were shapely with muscle beneath the pleasing golden skin.

“Is there an alternative?” Harry pleaded, surprising TMR anew. Was Harry _really_ going to _refuse_ to…?

“You don’t have to do anything that makes you uncomfortable,” Technician Cole assured Harry, and while he couldn’t be sure, TMR thought he saw her give TMR a swift glance. Sadistic glee, no doubt. “There will be no clearer reward for TMR, but it isn’t up to you to maximize his happiness.”

Harry shot her a look somewhere between relief and agony. “It’s not, I suppose. And he seems to like any…” he cleared his throat, “ _kind_ of touch.”

“Indeed,” said Technician Cole, matter-of-fact. “Shall we go over the functionality of the link, then?” She tucked her clipboard under her arm and appeared ready to rattle off a familiar lecture.

TMR, pressed for time and lacking other inspiration, buried his face in his hands and let out a strangled sob.

“What’s wrong?” Harry sat next to him on the bed; TMR felt the mattress dip and let himself roll onto his hip toward Harry, so he was pressed against his warm side while still cradling his face. Harry put an arm around his shoulders and TMR’s eyes watered in earnest at the rightness of it. If only there was something other than worry in the link.

“I guess I’m not as recovered as I thought,” he muttered, glancing at Technician Cole through a gap in his fingers. She was looking at him with her eyes narrowed practically to slits.

“We don’t have to talk about this right now, do we?” Harry asked the Technician. She looked startled, hesitating, but whether he realized it or not Harry outranked her as a forged link, and she could hardly pressure him.

“No, pre-Captain. Of course we don’t.” Her lip twitched, but when she could think of nothing else to say, she moved toward the door. TMR, satisfied, uncovered his face and leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder.

“I just want to rest a little,” he whimpered. “I’ll be alright in a little while.”

“Of course. I could…” Harry made as though to release TMR, but then paused. “I suppose I shouldn’t leave him?” he asked the Technician.

“I suppose not,” she agreed grimly. “I’ll return in an hour, pre-Captain?”

“Thank you,” said Harry, rubbing TMR’s arm. “That sounds fine.”

While TMR enjoyed Harry’s soothing touch, he thought about what he could accomplish in the next hour. An hour wasn’t long, but it was enough time for most things. And Harry was merely human, after all.

“I thought the link was settling, but I don’t know. Then again, maybe it’s just…” TMR shuddered. “Negative associations?”

“With Technician Cole, you mean?” Harry murmured. Obviously Technician Cole’s inexpressive demeanor had bolstered the credibility of TMR’s story about her disdain for Improveds. “Maybe I could request someone else.”

“It would be so easy to just pass you the manual,” TMR said, as though to himself. Then more loudly, “I’ll be fine, Harry. If I rest a while, I’ll be better, even with her around. I promise.” He pulled away from Harry to lean back in the bed, blinking up at him with eyes he knew were still attractively wet. “Will you lie down with me for just a little while?”

Harry slowly reclined beside him, studying his face intently. “I suppose that’s okay.” He brushed TMR’s errant curl from his forehead, then quirked a slight smile when it instantly sprang back. “You seem different,” he added quietly.

“Different?” TMR tentatively tugged at Harry’s waist, and Harry sank down beside him obediently.

“From the way you were in the stasis chamber,” Harry murmured. “You were so confident, even though you had to know how much danger you were in.” He was stroking TMR’s cheek now. “But I guess no one is brave all the time.”

TMR hummed in response, considering his answer. “We weren’t linked then,” he offered. Harry nodded thoughtfully.

“No, but...”

“Now, I trust you implicitly,” TMR said, tangling one of his legs between Harry’s, annoyed that he felt the rasp of his trousers and not his skin. But still, the weight, the firm press of bone, was satisfying. And of course, Harry’s _heat_.

“It doesn’t bother you?” Harry asked. “That you trust me already? That you want me to touch you? To…” he trailed off and blushed.

TMR, sensing an opening, smiled slowly and nestled his hips closer to Harry’s so they were flush. “To fuck me?” he murmured.

Harry’s eyes widened and his fingertips went still on TMR’s collarbone. TMR felt the puff of warmth as he exhaled shortly against his cheek. “Is that what you want?”

TMR didn’t have to act, now. The proximity to Harry, the pulse of the link, had him hardening, his cheeks flushing. He lifted his head so he could press his nose against the side of Harry’s neck and inhale.

“Yes.” He sensed a bit of hesitation in the link, and after a frozen moment, had a rush of revelation. He opened his mouth so he could set his teeth against Harry’s throat and gently rake them together, nipping a fold of hot skin. Harry jerked but then instinctively pressed closer instead of pulling away. “Or I could fuck you,” TMR said in his ear, heart pounding at the thought. It should have shocked him, this realization about Harry’s desires, and it might have if he hadn’t had the link telling him that his deduction was exactly right.

Harry groaned—it sounded pulled from him, involuntary—and his hand clenched over TMR’s ass. TMR panted at the intensity of the feeling and the waves of satisfaction that were pouring through the link. It was so much feeling, all at once, it was practically unnavigable. All his previous experiences felt like nothing but child’s play and he had lost all grip on his body, thrusting instinctively against Harry in an arrhythmic frenzy.

“You...you _darling_ thing, _fuck_ ,” Harry breathed, hot in his ear, and TMR keened. Harry turned his head to bury his face in TMR’s hair. “God. I can’t…”

He grasped TMR’s hip, as though to stop his thrusts, and TMR heard himself whimper. It was a weak sound, and he would have hated it if there was anyone there to hear but Harry. At the thought that Harry would stop him, TMR did the only thing he could think to do to prevent him. He opened the link on his end and let his own feelings rush in, so a circuit that had traveled in only one direction now moved both ways.

Harry sucked in a deep breath and his grip turned painful on TMR’s body.

“Harry, please,” TMR said, the words a rush, unplanned. He flushed at the needy sound of his voice.

“Shhh,” Harry murmured, reaching between them, his hand slipping beneath the gap in the closures up the front of TMR’s flimsy jumpsuit and seizing him in a sure grip. “I’ve got you.”

TMR could have wept at the feeling of Harry’s hand on his cock, at the satisfaction that radiated through the link from Harry, and at his own sheer physical relief. He clung to Harry’s shoulders while Harry stroked him, murmuring soothingly in his ear all the while.

Three, four, five strokes, and then as he came, helplessly and with a cry, Harry cupped him, cradled his balls as they tightened and pulsed. When TMR went limp, he held him tightly to his chest..

“Fuck,” Harry whispered as TMR lay lax in his arms. But TMR was too heavy-limbed with bliss to worry—or to do anything else, for that matter, but drift into a contented and unusually dreamless sleep.


	3. Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to aroundloafofbread for their thorough and thoughtful beta!

TMR fell asleep quickly. He seemed to do that: fall asleep in an instant, as quickly as he came awake. There was no intervening drowsiness. Harry held him for a few minutes, feeling increasingly restless as the moments passed and he regained control of his mind — and his body. 

He’d been hard while they were in the midst of it, but as soon as TMR came, his erection flagged. Now he was just aroused enough to be uncomfortable but not to actually get off. In essence, he was lodged in that miserable place between need and uncertainty that had often made sex tedious for him in the past.

His hand was sticky with TMR’s come, curled into a loose fist. Harry had caught most of it, and could remember the exact, surprising force of it. The thought, the memory, and the accompanying guilt made Harry’s anxiety and arousal spike alarmingly.

When he couldn’t hold still any longer, he extracted himself from TMR’s embrace. TMR frowned, and Harry froze a moment, but then TMR’s expression relaxed again and he rolled into the warm part of the mattress where Harry had been lying.

Harry shucked off his clothes and bathed in the little attached chamber that felt as colorless and seamless as the inside of an egg. He avoided glancing at the mirror, unwilling to look himself in the eye, and ignored his persistently half-hard cock. 

Harry got dressed in a clean uniform. TMR was still asleep. Looking for something to do and with the sense it would be absurd to keep putting off something so essential, he pulled out the manual from his still-packed bags and skimmed the index with a grimace.

He’d never been much of a book-learner. In school and then the academy, his pattern of performance had been mediocrity in classrooms and excellence in practicums. Apparently a few years hadn’t changed that.

It didn’t help that their quarters were a single room, and he had the constant distraction of a sleeping TMR. He only made it through a few pages before he gave in and walked restlessly toward the bed, standing over the sleeping boy.

TMR had looked peaceful in the stasis chamber, and agonized in the drugged unconsciousness during the forging. Now he looked—absent, somehow? Like an empty vessel, unnervingly death-like. The thought made Harry shudder, even as he leaned nearer and gently rested two fingers on TMR’s throat. His pulse thrummed reassuringly beneath his smooth white skin.

Harry’s touch lingered.

He remembered how TMR had felt, hard and needy. How his eyelashes had fluttered, long enough to brush against Harry’s cheek. He’d been big, for someone so lean, hot and heavy in Harry’s palm. 

He had such a pretty face. There was a fineness to his nose and a fullness to his lips that would have been called delicate if he was petite. Harry was moved to kiss his brow, filled with a confusing, protective instinct which seemed to flow from the link.

TMR opened his eyes, as though he’d only been pretending to sleep, and met Harry’s gaze without surprise. Harry snatched back his hand and took three quick steps backwards.

“You’re all the way over there,” TMR complained with the slightest pout, propping himself up on one elbow. He still wore his jumpsuit, but it was bunched up and pulled tight over his chest and abdomen. TMR saw Harry looking and smirked, then grinned when Harry’s face got flushed.

“Sorry,” Harry muttered, looking away and taking a couple steps toward the desk and chair. He put the chair between them, leaning on the back of it.

“Why? I like to be looked at.”

Harry glanced up in surprised. “By anyone?” he snapped before he could stop himself.

TMR shrugged, toying absently with the first closure on the suit without actually opening it. His fingers were nimble and long with smooth knuckles.

“Now, just you. Unless you’d like to share.”

Harry’s stomach dropped at the idea of TMR making the sounds Harry had just heard in anyone else’s ear. And then he felt a buzzing, swelling emotion building hot and fast as a chemical fire. It took him a second to realize it was a swirl of almost unrecognizably intense jealousy and anger.

TMR made a low whimpering sound, and Harry’s head cleared in an instant. The boy had dropped to his side and curled in on himself slightly, clutching his ears. He was staring at Harry with wide eyes and for once he looked exactly his age.

“S-Sorry Harry,” he murmured, and Harry’s blank mind was immediately refilled with horrified shock.

“Did I…” Harry jerked upright, the chair nearly toppling, but he didn’t move toward TMR. He fisted his hands at his sides. “Did _I_ do that?”

TMR slowly lowered his hands, his expression easing. “The link. I displeased you.”

Harry’s heart stuttered. He’d only been—it wasn’t—was _that_ really going to happen every time Harry had a less-than-even-keel reaction to something TMR said or did? His subconscious quietly remarked that his reaction had been a bit more intense than he’d like to admit, but Harry ignored it.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That’s on me. I need to read the manual.” He looked at it, sitting innocently on the desk where he’d dropped it before so he could look at TMR while he slept. He felt a fresh wave of self-disgust to go along with the lingering horror of knowing that he no longer had the luxury of privacy in his own head.

“It’s okay,” TMR was smiling. “I don’t want you to share me either.” His fingers went back to his suit fastenings. “But you liked it when I did this,” he murmured, watching Harry intently. Despite himself, Harry _was_ watching, eyes dipping automatically to the bit of smooth, pale chest TMR revealed as he opened one fastening and then swiftly dropped his hand to the next one.

“Before, I was—” TMR hesitated, “—overwhelmed. I can do better.”

Harry tried very hard not to think of what past performance measurements TMR had in case it caused another reprimand in the link. “You were…” Harry had been about to say ‘ _fine_ ,’ but then he had a flash of memory again. TMR grinding against him; the feel of his body under Harry’s hands, like holding something made of all Harry had ever craved, distilled into one pretty boy.

“You were perfect,” he said eventually, looking TMR in the face, so he saw how the compliment struck him. Surprise, despite his natural smugness, and a second of simple pleasure that Harry might have mistaken for shyness if he hadn’t spent more than sixty seconds with TMR. He wasn’t capable of shyness, Harry was certain of that.

“I can do other things perfectly too,” TMR said. “Anything you like,” he added, sitting up so he could knee walk across the bed in Harry’s direction.

Harry put his hands back on the chair, holding it like a shield.

“I don’t think so. Not until we see the Technician.” He had only just remembered Technician Cole, and now he realized he should probably have clarified how he should send for her. He didn’t have a working knowledge of the internal comms here, and for some reason having pre-Captain Weasley come help him felt wrong.

Not that TMR would care that Harry and Weasley had spent a night together, and not that it was _rational_ to feel conflicted about it in hindsight. One had nothing to do with the other.

Right? Or would TMR feel, at the thought of Weasley touching Harry, the way Harry had felt at the thought of someone else touching TMR?

He shook it off, worried about how much he was hoping for a certain answer. The link was really much more invasive than he’d expected.

TMR was surprised at being refused. That was plain to see. He’d paused in undressing, given Harry’s reaction, and so his jumpsuit was open only to his navel, gaping to show his lean chest and a grid of tight muscles on his abdomen, perfectly defined. He was practically hairless on his chest and stomach, but Harry knew that he was softly furred between his legs…

He swallowed and looked away. “I need to figure out how to get Technician Cole back here. If that’s...now that you’ve rested?”

He glanced back at TMR, who had sat back on his heels, lips pursed, to shrug.

Taking that as assent, Harry went for the comm panel, and hoped the system was intuitive.

It was much more sophisticated than what he was used to — in fact it was several generations beyond it — but the basic structure and commands were familiar. He found Technician Cole in the directory and chose the message option, then keyed in a few lines of text.

_Recipient: Sr. Tech. Cole_

_Originator: p. Cap. Potter_

_Thank you for allowing additional time for TMR to rest. I hope we can meet at your earliest convenience. TMR and I are ready now._

The thought of waiting around for a reply made Harry anxious. He didn’t trust himself not to engage in a repeat of his earlier mistake. It had come upon him so suddenly, stronger than any other urge he could recall. Harry cast around for an excuse to get out of the room, but couldn’t think of anything specific. Not that it mattered. TMR would do what Harry asked him to, right?

“Why don’t you show me around?” he asked, trying for levity. “I don’t like being shut up in a room this long.”

TMR didn’t complain. Maybe he couldn’t. Harry wasn’t sure where the line was. If Harry made a suggestion, did the link interpret it as an order instead? He had a hard time thinking of TMR as _biddable_ , and yet he slipped into his shoes and followed Harry into the corridor without complaint.

While Harry paused in the doorway, TMR came up beside him and slid his hand into Harry’s. Startled, Harry grasped his fingers in return, almost a reflex. It came with a flood of comfort and a sense of wellness that could only be the link. It wasn’t coming only from Harry, though he suspected he’d like this tactile behavior even under less bizarre circumstances. TMR was the sort of person anyone would be lured to touch.

Shaking that thought off, Harry fixed a smile on his face and turned it toward TMR. TMR was watching him patiently. “What do you want to see?” he asked, rubbing his thumb over Harry’s.

Harry’s smile tightened, and he felt a jerk and pull in his lower stomach. This was _not_ the time for _that_ , so, horrified, he thought very deliberately of other things and also struck off down the corridor in a random direction.

“Whatever’s over here,” he suggested.

He wasn’t sure, but he thought the breathy sound TMR made was a stifled laugh.

“The greenhouses,” TMR said, not sounding very interested. 

“Are there gardens, too?”

“Of course.”

People couldn’t live underground, Harry supposed, without a space designed to feel like the outdoors. He remembered that TMR had never seen real sunlight, much less a sky, and the thought felt wrong, like it was bruising Harry right in the heart. He hoped the station had a good replica.

The antechamber let them into a bright, cool space about the size of a large sports stadium, the illusion of low-lying clouds a little denser and more orange than anything in a real atmosphere, but otherwise it was a pretty good pantomime. Particularly if you’d never seen the real thing.

There were also people there, which shouldn’t have surprised Harry. But it did because, after so long in military installations or outposts, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a child.

There were three girls and a boy playing by a bench along a paved walkway that wove between beds of flowering plants coated with blossoms and stretches of slightly-too-perfect grass turf. They paused in their game, which seemed to involve stacking small rocks into improbably-high towers, and looked at TMR with cautious recognition.

Two adults rounded a bend in the path. They wore Technician uniforms, and reacted to the sight of Harry and TMR in a similar manner to the children.

Of course, Harry realized, looking again at the way the stones had been balanced with inhuman precision, the children were Improveds.

There would be several of them this young. The typical class size was ten, and they were born every three years. Somewhere on-planet, there might even be Technicians cradling infants that would seem entirely human to the untrained eye.

“Pre-Captain,” murmured one of the Technicians, with a nervous little nod. She glanced TMR’s way, and then away. Harry remembered Technician Cole’s behavior, and compared it to this Technician’s very different, but equally strong unease. A thought was beginning to form in Harry’s mind, reinforced when the same Technician smiled down at the three Improveds by the bench with naked fondness. “Ellarie, Constance, Mallory, Jason, the fourteen-year-olds said they’d love a game of catch, if you’re up for it.”

Totally distracted from TMR, the kids jumped up with excited exclamations and the Technician guided them away.

“There’s a pond over here,” TMR said, tugging on Harry’s hand. “It has real ducks. Poor things. I’ll show you.”

Harry let himself be led, looking thoughtfully at the side of TMR’s lovely, unrevealing face. Harry knew people lied, and he knew that within the protocols and chains of command, people took advantage. But for the most part, Harry hadn’t had to concern himself with others’ machinations. He’d known since Moody told him why he was brought to New Earth that his life was going to get more complicated, but he hadn’t begun to realize how much. Now he grimly wondered how much of Technician Cole’s watchfulness toward TMR had been due to him being an Improved, and how much of it had been due to him being...TMR?

Mulling that over, Harry followed TMR. The path didn’t loop far before Harry saw the pond. Full of colorless, unmoving water, it was the most unnatural part of the greenhouse so far.

Harry could see why TMR had expressed some pity for the ducks. The pond was built up against one of the walls, and there was a too-convincing depiction of a stretch of water beyond the actual one, disappearing into a foggy horizon. The ducks kept mistaking the unreal for the real and bumping into the barrier.

Also, from this part of the space, they couldn’t see or even really overhear whatever game the other Improveds were playing with the Technicians looking on. A stand of trees separated the pond from the rest of the space and they felt quite alone. Harry pulled his hand from TMR’s and walked to the edge of the water, where instead of mud there was just a smooth, sculpted off-white slope past the neat edge of the turf.

“You don’t want to see the other kids?”

TMR snorted. “I’m not a ‘kid.’”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“Your syntax implied it.” 

Harry was used to not being the smartest person in the room, but he could tell this kind of thing was going to grate on him. He pretended to watch the ducks.

“Still, they’re practically your brothers and sisters, right?”

TMR didn’t say anything. In Harry’s peripheral vision, he could make out his posture but not his expression. He was flexing the hand that had been holding Harry’s, and tracing a pattern in the grass with his toe. It sprang back into perfect form every time, of course.

Harry felt a little pang. He’d always been isolated, too, especially as a child. Just because you were around other kids didn’t mean you would fit in. He knew that as well as anyone. And just because people were assigned to take care of you, didn’t mean they _cared_.

“Well,” he said, suddenly wanting TMR’s hand back. He turned to him and shrugged. “If not, then you won’t miss them when we go.”

TMR looked up with a smile on one side of his mouth. “When will we go?” He looked eager.

Harry, of course, didn’t know the answer. He didn’t know anything. Usually that wouldn’t bother him, but he felt responsible for TMR and his expectations. And strangely, knowing TMR would be with him made the future seem— _brighter_ was an absurd word for it, but—

“Let’s go see if there’s anything from Technician Cole on the comm,” Harry murmured. TMR frowned at the avoided question, but to distract him, Harry reached out and took his hand again. It worked.

There was nothing on the comm unit, but as soon as the doors slid closed, Harry second-guessed the wisdom of putting himself and TMR back behind a closed door.

By the time he’d turned from the comm panel, TMR had quickly removed his shoes again and was studying the manual where it lay on the desk in plain sight.

For some reason, the sight made Harry uneasy. Not only because TMR’s legs looked a mile long under the folds of the jumpsuit or that his bare feet were as strangely attractive as the rest of him. He had high arches and the backs of his heels were faintly pink.

“You’re not supposed to read it,” Harry murmured, “are you?”

He wasn’t exactly sure where the realization had come from, or when. It hadn’t occurred to him when TMR had first asked him not to disclose the offer to pass the manual to Harry. But now it seemed obvious, maybe because of the thought Harry’d had in the greenhouse.

TMR turned, in no rush, and leaned back against the edge of the desk. He tilted his head to one side. The only thing about him that betrayed any uneasiness was a faint color in his cheeks that hadn’t been there before.

“All I’m ‘supposed to do,’” TMR said calmly, “is what _you_ want me to do, Harry.”

At first Harry thought TMR was trying to distract him with innuendo, but then he realized that wasn’t the case. That was how the link worked, wasn’t it? TMR wanted what Harry wanted. But there had to be more to it, Harry was sure.

“Well, I don’t want to violate a protocol that gets us locked up,” he muttered, and then his impatience overtook him and he crossed the room to TMR. As he got nearer, TMR’s eyes widened and his cool facade faltered. Harry took a perverse satisfaction in the sight, getting right up into TMR’s space before quickly reaching around him to snatch the manual and stepping back again.

“You like rules,” TMR said, and Harry gave him a sharp look. He thought he’d heard a hint of derision in TMR’s voice, but when he looked at the boy he second-guessed himself. TMR was still leaning against the desk, one knee bent, his head cocked, and he looked merely curious.

“I don’t _like_ them, but they are what they are,” Harry said uncomfortably. It wasn’t something he’d ever thought about before. Did he like rules? He knew he liked predictability. The sense he had a part to play, understood what it was and how to perform it.

“If you like rules,” TMR said thoughtfully, “then we’ll play by them better than anyone.” He stood up straight and strolled toward Harry. Harry went rigid, but didn’t move.

TMR put his hands on Harry’s chest and smoothed the fabric of his uniform toward his sides, his thumbs grazing Harry’s nipples in a way that had to be deliberate. Harry, who hadn’t fully fought off the confused lust in his body, bit the inside of his cheek.

Encouraged, TMR stepped closer, his hands coming together at the small of Harry’s back, their thighs pressing together. He wasn’t taller than Harry yet, but his body still showed signs of immaturity. He had some growing to do.

Again Harry’s stomach churned with co-mingled guilt and lust, which apparently weren’t at odds where his cock was concerned. They each fed into the other instead on an intense loop, until Harry realized he had to step away from TMR _now_ or risk being caught filling up against TMR’s hip.

Harry didn’t move, only looked back at TMR’s face, which was still tilted to one side in that way of his, but very close to Harry’s. It meant that the angle was just right for them to lean closer and kiss, but neither of them closed the distance.

And then TMR shifted a half-inch nearer, which put pressure on Harry’s swelling cock in a way that punched the breath out of him, stirring the hair hanging over TMR’s right ear.

“It wasn’t right, earlier,” TMR said, his eyes close and bright. He slid his hands lower so that he was pressing Harry harder into his body, and ground his own hips a bit. Harry grunted and bit his lip, still unable to find the will to move, either to get away or to chase the friction. “I should have been able to touch you, too. But now, we could…?”

He rolled his hips deliberately, like a question. Harry dropped the manual. It hit the hard floor with a sharp bang, but Harry didn’t even flinch. He grasped TMR reflexively by the sides of his waist.

“That’s not what I want,” Harry managed, his voice low and rough. He shuddered and he slipped his arms around TMR, leaning closer. “I don’t,” he added, even as he bent his head and hooked his chin over TMR’s shoulder. TMR’s hair really was impossibly silky against Harry’s ear and cheek, and he smelled like rain.

“If it wasn’t, I’d know,” TMR argued quietly, and worked a hand in between their bodies to palm Harry through the starchy material of his uniform. “I know what you like,” he said. “I feel it, remember?”

Every time Harry tried to summon a protest, he felt a wave of crippling lust. It didn’t make sense. He’d never felt anything so intensely; it felt like more than his body was designed to process. He could barely stay on his feet, let alone resist. Why hadn’t anyone told him _this_ about the link?

TMR was working open his fly with those nimble fingers that had easily made short work of the fastenings on his jumpsuit. Harry wished it was open now; he’d run his hands all over that smooth-planed chest. But then, he wasn’t sure what he was capable of other than burying his face in TMR’s neck and clutching his back for support when he finally slid his bare hand over Harry’s shaft.

 _No_ , Harry thought feebly, but as though he was arguing with someone other than himself, another fierce wave of attraction crashed over him in answer. It was so intense that he was frantic for an outlet, and before he realized what he was doing, he’d sunk his teeth hard into TMR’s neck, behind and below his ear.

TMR hissed in surprise and tightened his grip on Harry. Harry bucked against his hand, panting into the place he’d bitten and laving it with his tongue. Somehow, he was already close to coming. He blamed it partially on the allure of TMR, which he was well aware of from their first moment alone together in the stasis chamber, and the frustrations of the past couple hours. But there was something else, something _more_ , that had to be the link. It overpowered his will and his self-control so completely that he came within a minute of TMR’s first touch, and with a strangled cry.

Harry staggered against TMR, who was of course much stronger than he looked and wasn’t thrown off-balance in the least. He was humming approvingly into Harry’s ear, stroking his back, and easing his messy hand out of the space between their stomachs.

Harry had no idea what to say or do, and distantly heard the comm panel chiming. Apparently Technician Cole had sent her reply.

His self-possession was flooding back. Apparently there was an inverse relationship between arousal and rationality in his head. More so now than ever before, including his teenage years. He was not proud, and the sight of a clear set of teeth marks, dark red on TMR’s neck, made it all worse.

“I…” he began dumbly, turning his head toward TMR’s face. But if anything, TMR looked pleased. He reached a hand up to gingerly touch the bite, then paused and wrinkled his nose. His fingers were slick in places from Harry’s come, Harry realized. TMR looked at his soiled thumb, then put it in his mouth and sucked it clean.

Harry had just had the most intense and draining orgasm of his life, but he still felt his balls tighten once more at the sight.

“I thought you’d taste a bit more like I do,” TMR said when his hand was out of his mouth again. And _that_ —imagining TMR touching _himself_ and then tasting _his own_ …

TMR was hard again; Harry could feel him. He wasn’t surprised, exactly. TMR was sixteen. It made sense for him to get carried away. What was disconcerting was that Harry seemed to have no more finesse for handling the situation than TMR.

The comm chimed again. Harry made himself step back, and at once his foggy head cleared. He buttoned his fly without looking at TMR, and when his clothes were rumpled but in order, he felt a little more grounded, too. Like the flimsy cloth was armor.

Maybe that was the key. Limited contact. Fully clothed at all times. Harry’s foot bumped against something and he looked down at the dropped manual, then hastily picked it up, marveling that he’d been so totally distracted that he’d been so careless with a fairly fragile piece of tech. It didn’t seem to be damaged, fortunately.

“Go clean up,” he suggested to TMR, who treated it like an order and disappeared into the facilities at once. Harry went to the comm panel to read the messages waiting there.

_Recipient: p. Cap. Potter_

_Originator: Sr. Tech. Cole_

_Pre-Captain: there has been an event at the facility that necessitates an evacuation of all un-forged Improveds. I must oversee the operation. I encourage you to review your manual, and trust that Captain Fray will be uniquely qualified to address your questions and concerns._

_Recipient: p. Cap. Potter_

_Originator: p. Cap. Weasley_

_Take care, Potter._

Weasley’s message didn’t make any sense, until a moment later when a priority message automatically replaced the others, taking up the entire display.

_Recipient: ALL_

_Originator: Comm. Cap. Moody_

_THREAT LEVEL 3 ISSUED. ALL PERSONNEL INELIGIBLE FOR IMMEDIATE OFF-PLANET EVACUATION SHALL BE SECURED. ALL PERSONNEL AND CIVILIANS ELIGIBLE FOR EVACUATION SHALL BE ESCORTED BY UNIT 2. UNITS 1 AND 3 REPORT TO SATELLITE IN COMBAT-READY STATUS._

“Fuck,” Harry said faintly. He jerked his head toward the door just as he heard the failsafe lock engage. Even after spending most of his life in and out of space stations, Harry was susceptible to stirrings of claustrophobia in moments like this one.

A final message came up.

_Recipient: P. Cap. Potter_

_Originator: Comm. Cap. Moody_

_Potter, apparently your Improved can’t go above-surface this close to the forging, so you’ll have to sit tight. We’ll be back ASAP, but either way, your commanding Captain should arrive today. If your unit beats us here, they’ll extract you to resume their ongoing mission. Good luck, son._

TMR was beside Harry, threading their fingers together. It made Harry feel slightly better, though it did nothing for the unreality of the situation. A threat level 3 rarely amounted to anything, and Harry wasn’t supposed to be doing anything except letting the link settle, anyway. The evacuation seemed strange, but maybe that was standard when there were so many civilians in a station. 

He just wished the door wasn’t locked.

TMR had read over Harry’s shoulder, of course. Now he tugged on Harry’s hand. “Nothing to do but wait,” he said, not sounding sorry about it. Harry just stared at the door with helpless dread.

TMR let go of his hand and walked toward the bed, so unbothered that he had the nerve to _yawn_. Harry glared at him, annoyed for no discernible reason, and TMR looked over his shoulder with an innocent smile as he crawled into the bed.

Then it hit Harry, too—the urge to yawn and impossibly heavy eyelids. He remembered how drowsy TMR had gotten practically the moment he came. Harry felt that way now, too. The same way the blind, desperate urge to chase his orgasm had come over him before, now he could think of nothing he wanted but sleep. He stumbled toward the bed, kicking off his boots.

All of TMR’s skin was too cool, and the sheet was feeble protection. Harry knew himself to be unusually warm. TMR’s eyes widened and he made a contented sound when Harry wrapped his arms around him. TMR was so near Harry’s height that they fit together just right when TMR rolled over and pressed himself back against Harry. The position gave Harry a faceful of silky black hair and that smell—rainstorms, ozone, something metallic. TMR’s back was lean and strong against Harry’s chest, and Harry’s hand went naturally, comfortably to rest on his taut waist. TMR nestled his backside against Harry’s hips in a way that might have been sensuous if they weren’t both succumbing to the heavy pull of exhaustion.

Harry nuzzled TMR’s hair and felt, absurdly, as though this was not the first time, but the thousandth, which he’d held him. As sleep took him he thought, like human minds, time was less magical than anyone thought. If this was the first time or the thousandth, what did it matter to Harry? He nudged at the backs of TMR’s thighs, and TMR parted them so that Harry could tuck a warm knee between TMR’s cold ones, and then they slept.


	4. TMR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Mith for the beta!

TMR dreamed in the usual way: of the nonphysical. He kept expecting the voice, but there was only silence instead. It was as though the past two days had left all the universe pensive, and TMR temporarily directionless.

Harry had surprised TMR, deeply. He’d known that being with Harry would be unlike anything he’d experienced, but he hadn’t anticipated the weaknesses he’d face in himself. It had been years since he’d been so flustered, or struggled so much to master his emotional and physical reactions.

As exciting as these discoveries had been, there was so much more he and Harry could already be exploring, if only Harry wasn’t so stubborn. If only he wasn’t holding himself back and, in so doing, holding TMR back as well…

There was time for that, TMR reminded himself as he drifted out of the limitlessness of sleep back to the confines of his body, and Harry. They had so much time, beginning _now_.

But when he woke, Harry wasn’t beside him. The room was dark. TMR frowned and sat up. He lifted a hand and skated it over his hair. It was sleep-ruffled of course, and his skin felt pleasantly warm. Harry hadn’t been gone long, then.

TMR sensed him before picking him out of the deep shadows. “Harry?” he rubbed each of his eyes with the heel of his right hand. “Everything alright?” he added. This was the kind of thing he’d learned already from Harry. There were certain questions that were to be asked even when you already knew the answer.

Harry turned around from the desk, the manual in his hand, its dim glow illuminating the curve of his jaw and the frown on his mouth. TMR felt his entire body tense, tight as a spring. Then the right corner of Harry’s upper lip quirked, his eyes warm as they scanned TMR’s face. “Yeah. Just reading.” He grimaced and gave the manual a feeble wave. “Nothing too interesting so far. You should go back to sleep.”

It was only a suggestion, but still TMR felt Harry’s satisfaction as TMR sank back against the pillows and his eyes drifted half-closed. It would be better if Harry was touching him too, but the absent approval was almost pleasant enough to make TMR drowsy.

Almost, if Harry didn’t have the manual in his hand.

Clearly Harry hadn’t seen anything too problematic yet, but how long could that last? The manual wasn’t _that_ lengthy, even for a regular human.

TMR rolled onto his side, sure to make the blankets and pillows rustle, and let out a drawn-out sigh. He heard Harry’s chair swivel.

“I’m sorry, Harry.” He lifted his head. His hair was falling over one of his eyes, but it was still easy to see Harry, his lips slightly parted, his eyes intent. “I’m not very sleepy.”

“You don’t _have_ to sleep,” Harry murmured. “I’m not…” he peered down at the manual, “... _compelling_ you.”

TMR sat up. His jumpsuit was still unfastened halfway down the front and falling off one of his shoulders. He didn’t straighten it as he shook off the sheet and slid from the bed, sauntering toward Harry.

Harry watched him walk with his jaw hanging open, making TMR’s toes curl against the cool tile. He was going to swing into Harry’s lap and —

Harry’s expression suddenly cleared and he sat upright, holding up a staying hand. “Wait,” he said in a clear, commanding voice that made the link pull tight. TMR froze in place and forced himself not to scowl.

Harry didn’t seem to notice that TMR hadn’t stopped moving strictly of his own accord.  

“I need to read this.”

TMR smiled, but he knew it looked tight and unnatural by the wary, thoughtful expression it earned from Harry. Still he said, low, “Can’t you multitask?”

Harry shook his head, turning back toward the desk. “No. Touching distracts me because of the, er, natural feedback.” He said the last two words in the careful tone of someone who had just learned a term.

TMR wondered when Harry would reach the part of the manual that told him natural feedback didn’t develop until a link had been in place at least a year.

He flopped back onto the bed, frustrated. The boredom of his waking hours since the doors locked had been bad enough, but now instead of merely grappling with inaction, he had to wonder urgently what to do.

Maybe he was already safe. He’d felt Harry come apart at his touch. Harry had held him while he tumbled into sleep. He’d stayed awake a few moments longer than Harry and heard Harry murmur into his hair, ‘ _so nice_.’

As it had all gone on, TMR had also felt the link, ignited beyond expectation by causing Harry so much positive feeling. TMR knew, rationally, the link was engineered to make him addicted to that feeling, and therefore all the more malleable by Harry. But he still couldn’t resist it. Moths and flames, as the saying went. It was perfect, dizzying, and he’d ensured Harry felt some of it too. Maybe Harry already cherished TMR as TMR cherished him.

If Harry felt as TMR did, then Harry could read the manual twice over and TMR wouldn’t suffer more than a minor setback. Harry would forgive him. If Harry didn’t feel as TMR did, then when Harry realized the implications of the link’s behavior, TMR would suffer until he could earn Harry’s forgiveness and trust. Either way, the end result was the same. TMR and Harry were linked forever, and the link ensured they were drawn to one another. Harry would surrender to TMR eventually; he wouldn’t be able to help it.

* * *

Just when TMR began to worry about food, the door to their quarters unlocked.

TMR had been dozing; Harry had been reading. They both looked at the door in surprise, then they looked at one another.

“What…?”

“The lockdown must be over,” Harry murmured, going to the comm panel. There were no messages. TMR opened the door and looked out into the corridor. Harry made a surprised sound but didn’t correct him, so TMR wandered fully through the doorway. They were in a wing of officers’ rooms, so everyone behind the neighboring doors had evacuated. TMR felt pleasantly isolated by the silent stretch of space.

Harry came up behind him, careful not to get too close, and looked around too.

“Strange,” Harry murmured. “But I guess we knew they were all gone.” He skirted around TMR without so much as brushing against him. “Should we…?”

The comm sounded. Harry went back in their room to check it.

TMR had never been evacuated. All the younger Improveds must be gone. And the group in which TMR had grown up? He thought of them with disdain, and an edge of envy that maybe they had been able to go up to the surface before he could, since their links would be seen as settled whereas his was seen as new.

“That was from Captain Fray,” Harry said. He came out again holding TMR’s shoes. Then he looked at the parts of TMR’s chest which were still bare for a long moment. “Better straighten up your suit too.”

TMR’s hands went automatically to the fastenings of his suit. “So what did the message say, besides that we should look presentable?”

“It didn’t say that,” Harry said absently. TMR contained the urge to sigh. He was going to have to teach Harry about sarcasm. “The team is here. We’re supposed to meet them in the hangar.” TMR put on his shoes and looked at Harry expectantly.

Harry’s cheeks colored. “I’m not sure I know the way?”

TMR smiled and pointed. Harry shot him a quick, grateful smile. TMR felt a thrill, as though despite Harry’s distance since TMR had made him come, he was now close again. But the moment passed when Harry quickly broke eye contact and walked off.

Maybe it was the unit’s arrival that had Harry uneasy, but TMR thought Harry would be more relieved. He liked the structure of being a soldier, a team member. But he seemed on edge instead. TMR tried to reach for his hand, as he had so easily the day before, but Harry pulled away.

The hangar was two levels up, almost at the surface. TMR could feel his abilities intensifying as the lift went higher. It was dizzying, so he gripped the support rail on the elevator wall and swallowed. When he’d last been brought up here for training, he hadn’t had Harry’s attention to contend with, too. The link had been there, but practically dormant in terms of how it affected TMR when he wasn’t focused on it.

“All right?” Harry was looking at him now. Frowning, concerned. It might have been nice, if TMR wasn’t too bothered by his own moment of weakness to enjoy Harry’s attention. He deliberately let go of the rail and stood upright.

“I’m fine.”

Harry, too willingly convinced, nodded and looked away hastily.

The doors swept open and they stepped out into the hangar itself, which was eerily empty. TMR blinked at the sight. He’d only been through once or twice, un-linked Improveds being generally distrusted around spacecraft, but he always remembered it as a sea of crafts. New Earth was a military outpost, after all, but almost always one-hundred-percent inactive, so all crafts were generally stored here. Now they were all gone, even the long, tubular civilian crafts they must have used for the evacuation.

Without two or three dozen spacecraft parked from one wall to the other, the scale of the space was more evident. The hangar was more vast than all the greenhouses combined, its domed ceiling shimmering faintly with the force of the sunlight just beyond it. TMR looked up wonderingly, feeling as though he could almost make out the light, but he knew he was just perceiving the diffused heat.

Only one ship was present, an island in the metallic sea. It was mid-sized, much larger than anything TMR had seen in the hangar before. Still, he had the standard knowledge of spacecraft to know it was built for lengthy space flight for a crew of twelve, complete with sleeping and living quarters. The gunmetal-grey hull was pockmarked by what appeared to be a not-so-recent brush with a few small meteoroids and discolored around its blastpoints. It reeked of deep space. TMR found himself staring until Harry touched his elbow, drawing his attention to the eight people standing in front of them.

There were two women and six men. The team had three Improved pairs — it was obvious to TMR of course, but he wondered if Harry would figure that out without being told — and two regular, unforged humans, probably pilots or technicians. FIN and his link, the Captain, stood slightly ahead of the rest. TMR looked at them with unmasked curiosity. When the Improved FIN had left New Earth, TMR was only five years old. He hadn’t been all that aware of the forging or its immediate aftermath. But five years later, when he was ten and an Improved was brought back to New Earth in stasis, found unconscious on a battlefield and his human link dead, everyone in the academy had devoured every bit of news of his experimental reforging and miraculous survival.

The first thing TMR thought, looking at FIN, was that he reminded TMR of the ship. Crafted with care but battered by his travels. Like any adult Improved, he was tall and broad with lean but pronounced muscle in his torso, arms and thighs. He had dark hair, long and tied back from his face. The complexion of his strong-featured face was a shade darker than Harry’s and his eyes were a striking bright blue. A scar, silver in contrast to his skin tone and as wide as TMR’s forefinger, bisected his left eyebrow and curled back a fraction of an inch from his eyelid.

The Captain and FIN had matching, stern and distant expressions that suggested they’d been linked much longer than just five years, and gave away no defect in their reforged link.

The Captain herself was a very petite woman, no more than five feet tall, relatively plain-faced though that wasn’t a surprise to TMR. He was used to regular humans looking mousy alongside Improveds. She had long hair the same color as FIN’s, but her ponytail was higher on her head. The Captain’s eyes were very dark brown and had a sort of penetrating depth that made TMR want to avoid sustained eye contact. She was looking pensively from Harry to TMR and back with her arms folded over her chest. Her flight suit was roomy, making her seem even more childlike than the initial impression of her size in contrast to FIN.

But she spoke with a natural authority as she stepped forward and offered Harry her hand.

“I’m Captain Fray. Annie. I’m glad to meet you.”

Harry looked startled by the informality, but shook her hand. “Pre-Captain Potter,” he answered. “It’s nice to meet you, too. Er, Harry is my first name. And this is TMR,” he added stiltedly, stretching one hand toward TMR. TMR took advantage of the opportunity to press himself slightly against Harry, under his arm. It felt strange, seeing Harry in the midst of strangers, and some of them in TMR’s own class. There was no reason to be territorial. The links were all formed. But still, he felt better when they touched.

Captain Fray smiled. When their hands unclasped, she stepped to one side and gestured behind her. “My link, Improved FIN.” The Improved nodded and made no gesture toward a handshake. “That’s Captain Savannah Unruh and her link Improved KTE, pre-Captain Ryan Ortega and his link Improved CDO, and Airman Technical Jose Bennett and pre-Airman Technical Johnathan O’Hara.”

“It’s nice to meet all of you.” Harry was worrying about remembering all their names, and TMR had to resist the urge to assure him that he wouldn’t have to. That sort of thing would never be an issue for Harry again now that they were together; TMR’s capacity for retrievable memory far exceeded what Harry could ever require. Soon they’d work on passing.

Other than the commanding Captain and possibly the youngest linked unit— Ortega and CDO— the members of the crew were markedly unfriendly. Their discontent wouldn’t have bothered TMR except that he knew it would make Harry uneasy. TMR badly wanted to use the link, but something about the weight of Fray’s stare stayed him.

“We’ve decided to wait in orbit instead of bunking here, in light of the evac,” said Fray. “Do you have your belongings?”

Harry lifted his slim duffel bag and nodded, then looked curiously at TMR. “I should have asked where your stuff is?” He clearly felt guilty over it. Though TMR didn’t perceive all Harry’s thoughts, the occasional ones that were clear and having to do directly with TMR resounded in the link like they were TMR’s own. As Harry’s eyes skimmed over TMR, he was thinking that TMR had come into his possession with nothing but a jumpsuit (inappropriate for a residential spacecraft) and nothing more. Not so much as a toothbrush.

“Improved supplies are already on board,” said Captain Unruh. Her Improved could have been Improved FIN’s older cousin, except he had dark brown eyes and a heavier brow. Unruh herself was a slight but tall woman with grey-streaked, curly red hair and freckles. The sight of her reminded TMR of the Weasleys and made him want to growl. But then he remembered how his newly-discovered possessiveness had already triggered a negative loop, and swallowed his reaction before the ringing in his ears could reach a mind-splitting pitch.

He didn’t gather his wits fast enough to totally escape Captain Fray, though. He caught her sharp look out of his peripheral vision, but pretended not to have noticed.

“Unruh, KTE, FIN and I need to restock the craft while the Airmen do a little maintenance, but we’d like to be gone within the hour.” The crew stirred as though to demonstrate their restlessness, shifting from foot to foot, recrossing their arms. “So, Ortega will show you where your quarters are and he and CDO can answer your questions. I’ll check in with you when we get back on-ship. I know we have a lot to go over.” Fray looked from Harry back to TMR. TMR still didn’t meet her eye, instead turning his head toward Harry and rubbing his chin over Harry’s shoulder.

“Got it, Captain,” Harry said, with an uncomfortable sidelong glance toward TMR. He stepped away from TMR and hefted up his duffel.

When the crew split up, pre-Captain Ortega and CDO stayed behind. They were much more similar-looking than most linked units, Ortega being tall for a regular human and CDO being petite for an Improved. They both had short black hair, light brown eyes and dark brown skin with a pleasant sort of glow. (TMR also suspected CDO had been born anatomically female, but he’d learned that asking questions like that of someone you’d only just met wasn’t always well-received.)

There was only one strain of Improveds on New Earth and two Technicians with such a dark complexion, so it was particularly fascinating to TMR. He thought his eyes must have lingered a little too long when CDO gave him a swift wink.

TMR resisted the urge to roll his eyes in response. He wasn’t going to be shared, he thought smugly. Harry had said.

Compared to the rest of the crew, Ortega was noticeably less on-edge. He smiled at Harry as they shook hands, though his expression was strained.

“Hi, pre-Captain Potter.” He had the distinct accent of a Third Earth native. “I’ll show you around, like Fray said. Need help with anything?” He looked meaningfully at Harry’s duffel, which was now slung over his shoulder by its strap.

“I’m okay, thanks,” said Harry, and with a nod Ortega turned toward the main entrance ramp which had been left open off the starboard side of the ship.

“This is the _Atlantia_ ,” he said, patting the hull like the ship was a pet of which he was fond as he reached the top of the stairs. “Been my home for six years. Since I was newly forged, like you.”

The ramp left them in a sort of oversized vacuum chamber, except the doors leading off it to the rest of the ship were all open, a loose ring of identical, metallic-surfaced sliding hatches. There were a few storage lockers, some empty, some with space-grace suits hung up inside. The ceiling felt low and the entire place looked like it could use disinfectant, but maybe TMR was overly used to New Earth’s standards of maintenance.

Harry followed Ortega closely, TMR pulling back only enough to make walking unproblematic but still gently gripping Harry’s elbow. Harry was nervous enough not to shake him off. CDO came up the stairs behind them and when they were inside, he and Ortega exchanged small nods and CDO went off without another word, ducking through a hatch.

“The residences are this way,” said Ortega, leading them in another direction from the one CDO had gone in. TMR oriented himself based upon the structure in one wall that seemed to house the mechanism by which the hatch opened and closed. The door to the residences directly faced it. That corridor was long with a pitched curve, and there were hatches for each of the quarters, with the occupants’ names printed onto blue plates adhered above them. TMR was pleased to see that there would be some privacy. He’d detested the idea of giving up the solitary, if small, room he and Harry had to themselves the past couple days for crowded barracks.

The Airmen apparently bunked together, as did, predictably, each linked unit. TMR and Harry were rolled at the far end of the passageway with two empty rooms separating them from the nearest quarters. The hatch had been left open, so TMR saw into the space immediately. There was a single, low bunk that could be raised to the ceiling for additional space, and a small but still-substantial circular window alongside it that could be dimmed, but presently showed a clear view of the hangar. It would be easy to see the stars from there when they were in orbit.

Tom’s heart beat faster at the thought that soon they’d be not only aboveground, but in space itself. He was so distracted by the anticipation his hand went lax on Harry’s arm, and Harry seized the opportunity to slip away. He paced once around the room and looked over at Ortega, who was standing in the open hatchway.

“No barracks?” Harry asked with a frown.

“No,” Ortega said, with a perplexed smile. “You look disappointed.”

TMR might have been offended that Harry wanted to avoid being alone with TMR, if he didn’t know that it was because he was so drawn to TMR he didn’t trust himself. As it was, he felt only fond exasperation. To hide his smile, he walked over toward the storage compartment concealed near the bed. He opened it and saw the two sealed containers he’d had as long as he could remember. He touched one lid but refrained from taking inventory. If something was missing, he wouldn’t have time or opportunity to recover it anyway.

“I just assumed,” Harry was saying.

“I can show you the mess, and the technical room, if you want,” Ortega offered, though he was plainly curious about Harry, looking from him to TMR. “Or did you have any questions about the residences?”  
  
“I don’t think so,” Harry said. “Lead the way.”  
  
Harry turned toward TMR as they went out the door. “How did you know where that compartment was?”

“This is a G32 Mid-Sized Revival-Era Military Craft with a third-generation rebuild,” TMR said simply, gazing around at the corridor and noting where the ventilation ducts were located, made visible by a dimple every eight feet in the overhead lining. He pointed one out to Harry. “That’s where the oxygen flow compressor is mounted.”

“You just _know_ all of that?” Harry’s brows had risen. TMR simply smiled back, content in knowing that Harry hadn’t gotten far in the manual.

Ortega, curiosity visibly intensifying and warring with his good manners, blinked at Harry over his shoulder. “Well, it is a standard rebuild,” he said.

Harry sighed and gestured for Ortega to lead on.

Everything was where it should be in a ship like this one, so TMR paid less attention to the route they were taking through the ship’s passageways and more to the little ways in which the occupants had personalized them. Here and there were line art figures, obviously drawn with skill though even children weren’t permitted to draw on the walls at the academy.

There were also photographs, adhered at eye level and at random. Most showed the crew in casual or playful poses. In one CDO, grinning, carried Ortega on his shoulders. In another the Airmen were trying to stand upright on a remote-controlled micro-drone in the hangar.

Many of the shots showed the group as a whole. At work, but mostly at leisure, recognizing dates of birth or poised around a feeble-looking holiday tree and a mound of gifts wrapped in spare bits of packing materials. In these, the commanding captain and the Improved FIN were participants, but slightly removed. They looked upon the rest of the crew with some discomfort, or at their warmest, a sort of fond exasperation, the way Technicians sometimes smiled at the youngest Improved children.

Still, it was clearly an informal team dynamic. They’d all been together quite some time, though Fray had only commanded them for three years. It was strange that she was already a commanding Captain, with technically less field experience than even Ortega and far less than her teammate Unruh. It didn’t surprise TMR per se; who knew how the military side of the Union made these decisions? Regular humans talked themselves into the most irrational courses of action.

“And here it is, the heart of our humble home,” said Ortega, activating the hatch beneath a blue sign reading “MESSY MESS.”

TMR blinked twice at the custom-furnished space, consisting of a collection of chairs and sofas framed in — TMR had to lean in close to a chair arm to confirm — actual wood. The upholstery was vividly patterned and colorful, if faded. TMR wondered with vague horror how it was cleaned. He was happily accustomed to living amongst only smooth services, which were easily and reliably sterilized.

“Yeah, eclectic, I know,” Ortega said, crossing his arms with a smile as he looked around. “Unruh inherited all this stuff from an aunt. Supposedly most of it came over from Mars and was in long term storage. ‘A private collection of antiquities.’ Unruh didn’t like the aunt, and thought the best way to give her the middle finger would be to unpack it all and use it.”

“Unbelievable,” Harry said hollowly, looking around in disbelief. He touched a lampshade covered in some kind of soft, sheer membrane. Maybe silk? “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“She’s got some odds and ends in her storage compartment she might show you if she’s been drinking. And decides she likes you.”

Harry glanced over, puzzled. “I guess that’s an incentive to win her over.” He frowned. “About that. I got a feeling you all aren’t thrilled to, er, be here.”

Ortega rubbed the back of his neck, face rueful. “Yeah. Well, we were mid-mission when we got the call. And I haven’t been elevated yet, so technically this makes two trainee units in one team, which we’re not scaled for.”

He winced at the look on Harry’s face. “Not that anyone blames you. Um, or, if they do, I’m sure they’ll realize it’s not your fault. Eventually.”

Harry sighed. TMR wanted to pull Ortega’s limbs off his torso, and also to hug Harry against his chest. Neither desire could be immediately satisfied, which gave TMR a prickly-skinned feeling he hated.

“So, the technical room is through here,” Ortega said, gesturing. “CDO should be meeting us there with a couple things for TMR,” he added, pressing his hand into a panel that opened a hatch on the far side of the mess from where they’d entered.

The technical room was more like what TMR had come to expect from the rest of the ship. Standard furnishings, mostly metal and tempered glass, silver and white. The technical room had immaculate surfaces and gleaming control panels. The sight of a space that was being meticulously cleaned and maintained made TMR relax a bit.

While Ortega was distracted by Harry, he slipped over to the primary work station, and ran a fingertip thoughtfully over the screen.

Out of one ear he heard Ortega explain to Harry the systems space, where the Airmen worked, versus the trouble stations each of them could man if needed.

“And here’s the primary,” Ortega went on, then stopped speaking abruptly.

TMR looked up. Until then, Ortega clearly hadn’t noticed TMR’s particular attention to the screen, but now he certainly had. Ortega’s voice was cold when he snapped, “ _Away_.”

TMR stumbled back at once with a wounded hiss. He stared at his feet since he knew from experience that the murderous rage he felt at the programmed command would show on his face, and he wasn’t sure he wanted Harry to see it.

“What did you just do?” Harry shouted. TMR braced himself for the pain of Harry’s fury in the link, but then realized, half a moment later, that Harry was angry with Ortega, not with TMR. He glanced up in time to see Harry go toe to toe with Ortega, who stared back at Harry, comically baffled.

CDO barreled through the open hatch, expression violent. Through the link he must have perceived an imminent threat to Ortega. TMR, acting on impulse, used the ability to force CDO back through the doorway he’d just stepped through. CDO, eyes flying open wide in dismay, lost his balance and fell backward and out of sight, shoved backward by the invisible force.

Ortega shouldered past Harry and sprinted out into the corridor, where TMR heard him say, “Cee? Are you—” and then the hatch, automated to close as soon as the doorway cleared, slammed shut and left Harry and TMR in brief solitude.

Harry turned to TMR, his face torn between confusion and anger and worry. TMR, though, couldn’t enjoy the surprise of Harry coming to his defense or looking him over from head to toe with such evident care.

The voice was in his ear. The voice that was so familiar from TMR’s most distant dreams but which had only come to him once or twice while he was awake. It echoed in his ear angrier than he’d ever heard it, distracting him from anything else.

 _Fool. Fool. Fool._ _You_ fool _._

The hatch flew open to frame Captain Fray with FIN over her shoulder. She looked at TMR with a narrow-eyed focus that she’d only hinted at when they were introduced.

“Pre-Captain,” she murmured to Harry, “please make contact with your Improved.”

Harry hesitated but only for a moment, then he closed the remaining distance between him and TMR and grasped his wrist.

It was instantaneous. TMR’s thoughts narrowed and his ability funneled back into that hidden place where he was supposed to guard it so carefully (and from which it should have been impossible to retrieve from below the surface.)

FIN walked slowly toward them. He had a suppression band in his hand. The light caught it and caused Harry to notice it too.

“What…?” Harry’s brow furrowed.

“Put the band around TMR’s neck, pre-Captain,” said Fray from the doorway. FIN opened the clasp and held it toward Harry.

Harry took the band and TMR held still while Harry put it on.TMR tried to focus on the brush of Harry’s feelings in the link, soothing, and not the implications of the band. When the clasp closed and the band activated, TMR felt sleepy and nauseous, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t worn one before. And at least now he had his link, warm and active and full of comfort. He leaned on Harry’s arm and yawned.

“Pre-Captain,” Fray said. Her voice was much nearer. She must have determined it was safe now that any threat from TMR was subdued. TMR could make her out through his vision though it was dimmed to the effectiveness of a regular human’s. That meant he couldn’t have counted her pores even if he’d wanted to. Sometimes it was useful when he was trying to seem attentive during boring conversations.

“Remind me, how long have you and TMR been linked?”

“Almost three days,” Harry said. He slid an arm around TMR’s waist. “What’s wrong with him? The manual didn’t mention side effects to the suppression band quite like this.”

“The effects vary,” said Fray, still calm. “TMR is particularly vulnerable at the moment because you’ve been looping.”  
  
Harry looked over at her and TMR closed his eyes again with a sigh.

“Looping?” Harry was rubbing small circles on the small of TMR’s back. It seemed like the sort of thing he’d only do if he cared. TMR tried to enjoy it instead of paying close attention to what Fray and Harry were about to say to each other. “What’s looping?”


	5. Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FermionCat did more than beta read this. They helped me with it so much that I honestly feel that if you liked it, they probably deserve all your praise. <3

Harry was seated on a low bench built into the wall in the technical room, looking cautiously at Captain Fray. His Improved was lying halfway across his lap, like a very large and contented cat, while Harry absently stroked his back. 

Captain Fray stood on the opposite side of the room, resting her hip against the central control panel where the debacle between TMR and CDO had begun. Her arms were folded and she was frowning thoughtfully, like TMR and Harry were a curious puzzle she was interested in solving.

The only other person in the room was FIN, whose glower and crossed arms made Harry uneasy. However, Harry was beginning to think that was just how FIN looked at all times. He was very much the Improved stereotype: battle-scarred and extensively muscled, with an air of constant readiness. 

“Looping,” Fray began, “can only be explained if you understand how the link functions to begin with. Do you, pre-Captain?”

Harry nodded hesitantly. He had gotten through _that_ part of the manual—which was to say: the first few sections. “The link allows TMR to perceive my emotions. It stimulates a negative response whenever I feel negative emotions towards him, and a positive response for positive ones.”

Fray nodded. “That’s it, more or less. But TMR doesn’t _just_ perceive your emotions, Potter. He experiences them as his own. And that takes some getting used to, even for an Improved.

“When Technicians tell you a link needs to ‘settle,’ they mean that the Improved must learn to suppress their own emotions so they can concern themselves only with those of their link.”

That sounded horrible to Harry, but he didn’t want to dwell on it and look over-anxious to Fray. He took a moment to stroke TMR’s back with his fingertips, grazing his neck until he encountered the edge of the collar, which was even smoother than TMR’s smooth skin, and tried to take in the gist of what Fray had said. In return, TMR nuzzled Harry’s stomach contentedly. Harry wondered if TMR would feel the resultant fluttering there and tried not to squirm. He’d thought the collar might calm his responses to TMR, but so far that didn’t seem to be the case.

“Though,” Captain Fray went on thoughtfully, “the compatibility testing that was performed on you and TMR should ensure that process goes as easily as possible. When a linked pair are compatible, the likelihood of constant, conflicting emotions reduces.

“But TMR is fully capable of accessing the link so that it also works in reverse, causing _you_ to experience _his_ emotions in turn. When that occurs, it’s called looping. And it’s forbidden, for obvious reasons.”

Harry felt cold. This revelation changed his perception of many experiences from the past few days, including…

“What would be included in ‘emotions’?” Harry swallowed. “Just, um, happiness and sadness? Or…?”

Captain Fray’s mouth twitched, as though she was tempted to smile, but holding herself back.

“The entire range of feeling, I’m afraid.” She and FIN exchanged a brief look. While they made eye contact, FIN’s icy stare visibly thawed and his mouth tilted into a wry half-smile. As soon as Captain Fray looked away, though, his stoic mask snapped back into place.

“Did he do it on purpose?” Harry looked down at TMR’s head. It felt strange to discuss TMR like he wasn’t there. But he was so obviously disengaged in the conversation that it would have been even more unnatural to address him directly. “And what’s...ah, _wrong_ with him right now?”

“In the wake of an adrenaline rush, physical contact with their link activates a calming response. You activated it when I asked you to touch him. And yes, TMR almost certainly understood what he was doing when he looped with you.”

Harry thought that over. While it was now obvious that TMR had been manipulating him in the most intimate of ways, Harry wasn’t angry. The most prominent emotion he felt was actually shame. He hadn’t trusted TMR, not really. The link had created a confusing, instant closeness, but between Harry’s upbringing and his background as a soldier, he had stayed wary. 

And yet he’d let the manual sit unread, and he’d... _well_. He’d done things to and with TMR that he vowed not to when he agreed to the forging. Harry was the one to blame. Being frustrated with TMR felt pointless, like scolding a cat for toying with a mouse. Everything TMR did was so obviously natural and _right_ in his mind.

“I shouldn’t have let this happen,” he muttered, resting one hand on the top of TMR’s head so he could feel the cool waves against his palm. 

Fray’s look was stern, but with a hint of a smile. “Oh, Potter. Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’re no match for them when we’re unprepared. They are, after all, just like us...except— ” She paused and raised an eyebrow.

“Improved,” Harry finished with a wry smile.

“Exactly. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s the military’s, for rushing the forging,” she said. Her attitude shifted and she looked out the window, a frustrated wrinkle between her brows. It was the first rift in her cool demeanor that he’d seen.

“But _you’re_ military…?” Harry pointed out, feeling like he was missing something.

“Well, _now_. I was government before I was forged with FIN. And by then I was well into my career. But I suppose you don’t know anything about that.”

TMR lifted his head slightly to look up at Fray. Harry felt TMR’s cheek move against his chest as he spoke. His breath was warm through the fabric of the suit. “Captain Fray was a Senior Technician.”

“Yes,” Fray said. Harry thought that it was significant that neither her expression nor tone changed as she went from addressing Harry to addressing TMR. “But that’s a story for another time. TMR, you need to apologize to CDO.”

TMR burrowed his face back into Harry like he hadn’t heard. Harry tilted his own chin down, curious about TMR’s evasiveness, but could see nothing but soft inky hair. 

Now that he knew TMR was paying attention to the conversation after all, he asked him: “What did you do to CDO, by the way?” 

Harry noticed the way FIN looked at Fray, a silent request for permission. When she shot him a quick glance and a nod, he went to the closed doors and opened them. 

“I was impulsive,” TMR said, his voice muffled against Harry’s shirt. Harry waited, but TMR didn’t elaborate.

Fray did. “He used his ability. Which shouldn’t even be possible below sea level. But he also shouldn’t have been able to so easily and strategically loop with you, pre-Captain. There’s something unusual about your link. But then again, a T-model is always nonstandard, in my experience.”

Harry had no idea what a T-model was and didn’t get a chance to ask. Ortega and CDO were coming in, hands clasped and scowling at TMR.

“TMR?” Fray prompted. TMR sat up beside Harry lazily. He wrinkled his nose. 

“Hmm?” he replied, fingering the collar. Harry watched his narrow, smooth fingertips stroke the metal and swallowed.

“Tell him you’re sorry,” he said, a little more roughly than he’d intended. TMR blinked at Harry and their eyes met. Harry felt a blurry, dampened version of his awareness of TMR before the collar went on, and found himself missing the undiluted effect.

“I’m sorry,” TMR said easily, turning just his head toward CDO. “I’d rather not have shown my hand.”

There was a low, male laugh, which to Harry’s surprise must have come from FIN. Although, by the time he’d turned to look, all evidence was already erased and FIN had resumed looking like a fierce and vaguely exasperated statue.

From the center of the room, Ortega looked backwards over his shoulder at Fray, clearly outraged, while CDO stared ahead of them in apparent shock at TMR. Harry couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but amused and so TMR, sensing Harry’s emotions, smiled with satisfaction, his unoccupied hand falling to Harry’s knee and rubbing an absent circle that made Harry’s already unsteady pulse jump.

“Well,” Fray said, sounding resigned, “this is going to be interesting. TMR, you’ll wear the collar until further notice. Potter, you’ll watch him. Everyone else, secure the cargo. We’ll lift off as soon as Bennett finishes with the fuel.”

And that was that. Harry braced his feet to stand up from the bench, but before he could move TMR had already leapt to his feet, though he’d managed to keep his touch on Harry’s knee. In perfect sync.

“Keep him off the control panels at all times, Potter,” Fray said firmly. “Improveds can convert this kind of tech without even realizing what they’re doing.”

“Convert?” 

Fray rubbed her forehead. “Sorry, Potter. I forget that you have a…ah, different baseline of information than the typical candidate. Ask TMR, why don’t you? He can tell you more about himself than he’d like you to think. And you’d better get to your bunk and tuck him in before he collapses. The suppression bands take them some getting used to.”

Harry nodded weakly and headed out with a quick parting glance at Ortega, whose jaw was tight like he was grinding his teeth. He met Harry’s stare, sighed, then relaxed marginally and shrugged.

“Let us know if you need anything, Potter,” he said in a weary but sincere tone, and Harry smiled tentatively back, relieved that it seemed like Ortega wouldn’t hold a grudge.

“That one’s a weak link,” TMR murmured as they went into the corridor.

“He’s _kind_ ,” Harry corrected. “There’s nothing weak about that.”

“Is that right?” TMR asked with puzzled interest, then yawned and slumped harder against Harry. Harry, alarmed, steered him more quickly toward the part of the ship where Ortega had shown them their quarters.

When they got there, TMR’s head was lolling on Harry’s shoulder, and he was leaning so heavily against Harry he staggered. Harry managed to get him to the edge of the bed and drop him onto it. TMR, of course, made the half-conscious tumble look graceful. He came to rest stretched on his back with his arms thrown up around his head, one knee bent and the other leg dangling off the cushion.

He looked up at Harry with sleepy, hooded eyes. 

Harry wanted him. He wanted to crawl between his legs, or maybe on top of him. The now-familiar shame at this train of thought washed over him. Now that TMR had the collar on, Harry couldn’t blame the link, not completely. And while the urge he felt now was resistible, so unlike what he’d felt before, it was strong, nonetheless. Looping, he understood, was a literal doubling of his own fierce lust

Harry was standing there, staring and half-hard, when he caught TMR’s smirk and realized that TMR was still alert enough to gaze back, obviously pleased by the effect he was having.

Trying to distract them both, Harry thought of an earlier question. “What did she mean when she said you were a ‘T-model’?”

TMR didn’t look upset by the question, but he didn’t answer immediately either. Harry had noticed these deliberate pauses more and more, as though TMR couldn’t ever refuse, but he couldn’t bring himself to be completely obedient either.

“Just what she said. It’s indicated by my identifier. The first letter is my model.” His bent knee fell to the side and the sheer fabric stretched over his groin, leaving little to the imagination. And Harry didn’t have to rely on his imagination, anyway; he had his memory. 

Mouth suddenly dry, Harry managed to look TMR in the face and ask—because he _did_ want to know—“But what’s a model?” 

“The original body I’m patterned after.” TMR yawned and turned onto his side, eyes half-lidded. Harry could tell he was truly tired and not just being obstinate, and felt bad for interrogating him. He let himself sink slowly down beside TMR and put his forefinger against the collar. It was warmer than he thought it would be.

“We can talk about it later.” He slipped a finger under the edge of the collar and TMR quivered when Harry brushed the skin beneath. “I’m sorry you have to wear this. Does it bother you?”

“Yes,” TMR said without heat. “But it’s also peaceful.”

“Oh?”

TMR’s eyes slid closed. “Yes. S’nice to be alone. With you.” His hand drifted up and brushed Harry’s then fell back heavily. Harry slowly, reluctantly leaned away, sliding his palm down TMR’s shoulder. _Alone_ seemed like a strange word, but now TMR definitely looked too sleepy for more questions.

“Good night.”

“Good night, Harry,” TMR said, curling up to face Harry with a sigh. And just like that, he was breathing deeply and evenly. Asleep. 

A faint, rhythmic purr sang out from the ship, but with his hand on TMR it seemed to emanate from him as much as it did the floor, walls, and ceiling. Harry had spent enough time off-planet to recognize the awakening of an engine built to travel in deep space. The hairs on his arms rose when the gravity adjusted very slightly. It was the only sign they were no longer in the hangar on the surface of New Earth.

He went to the compartment where he’d tossed his items earlier. When he reached in, the soft edges of the letters he usually kept tucked in the interior pocket brushed his wrist, but Harry forced himself to ignore them. He found the manual instead and settled in to read it.

His head felt clearer than it had since the forging, but now that he understood that the change in his perceptions had been the constant closeness of TMR in his mind, he found he missed it. Still, it did make it easier to stay focused on the reading. 

The tone of the manual was distraction enough. Most everyone only knew about the achievements of particular Improved teams. Human children were taught that Improveds represented the harnessing of human potential. That they ventured into the deadliest and most strategically-demanding combat zones and did what no one else could. And until his transfer to New Earth, Harry’d had the same ideas.

But the manual was so detailed and clinical, so focused on the channeling of the link’s intentions through the subservient Improved, that they seemed to be less cherished asset and more tool.

Still, there were things in the manual Harry needed to know, so he tried to force aside his misgivings and take in as much information as he could.

When his eyelids grew heavy a couple hours later, Harry returned the manual to his bag. But he found his hand lingering in the interior pocket this time, fingering the familiar, frayed edge of the paper there.

He still had all his mother’s letters, though it had been a long time since he’d put himself through the experience of reading any of them. 

He’d been so distracted and overwhelmed by TMR that he hadn’t had time to dwell on the supreme privilege. He should. He needed to figure out when it was secured, and then when and how he could call in his request. How he should phrase said request. Could one request encompass both his parents?

(What if he got them back and they didn’t want anything to do with Harry? Didn’t he embody everything they hated, now more than ever, considering his permanent attachment to TMR?)

He felt a swelling pain in the pit of his stomach and snatched his hand back from the letters to ease it.

A rumble passed through the ship that had nothing to do with its engines. Years of military readiness made Harry instantly alert and grounded him back in the present. The _Atlantia’s_ guns were coming online. Though he hesitated, mindful of Fray’s order that he keep an eye on TMR, it only took a few seconds of deliberation before he was sprinting toward the technical room.

The hatch opened automatically for him when he was a stride away, revealing the entire crew at their stations and Ortega and CDO poised just inside the hatch. Harry came to stand at Ortega’s side. 

“What are you doing here, Potter?” murmured Ortega, pale-faced.

“I heard the guns arming,” he replied quietly. The tension in the room was palpable. Fray was leaning over one of the pilots—Bennett, Harry remembered—while Unruh’s hands flew over the commands to complete the positioning of the ship’s two central weapons, neither of which would be particularly effective against anything but a minor threat. Harry didn’t have to know every detail of the ship’s schematics like TMR to recognize that the _Atlantia_ was a straightforward transporter, not a combat vessel.

“Just—stay out of the way,” Ortega advised, taking Harry’s arm and pulling him back a few steps so that they stood just inside the entry hatch and to its right, closer to CDO.

From that vantage point, they didn’t have a clear look at any of the frontview screens and monitors. Tthe transporter was an outdated model without enabled transparency in the hull. Harry felt aggravatingly blinded to what was going on.

Sensing his tension, Ortega leaned over to murmur, “It’s a bogey. Small. Probably a scout ship that was as surprised to see us entering orbit as we are to see it.”

“How did it get past the rest of the fleet?” Harry thought of the hangar, which had been virtually empty. Standard procedure would have been for the earlier-deploying vessels to form a defensive formation around the atmospheric point of entry. “There are a dozen ships in the vicinity, right?”

Ortega shook his head. “No. Fray always has us take the long route.”

Harry frowned. That was shorthand for leaving the atmosphere at a minimum trajectory, which burned nearly four times as much fuel but allowed the craft to exit from cover of planetary scramblers at an unpredictable position. It was standard in hostile space, of course, but they were at home.

“What did she suspect?” Harry wouldn’t have guessed that Fray had been on-edge earlier, in spite of the altercation between her newest team members and the revelation that TMR and Harry had been looping, which was apparently forbidden. But maybe she was just an expert at compartmentalization.

“Nothing more than usual, I don’t think. That’s just how she always is.” He shrugged one shoulder, like his Captain’s paranoia was a harmless quirk. Harry supposed they should all be grateful for it, considering present circumstances.

“Kate, you’re up,” Unruh said, speaking over her shoulder. Harry hadn’t taken immediate notice of KTE, standing out of the way on the opposite side of the door. On their first introduction Harry had thought that KTE looked like FIN, but now he saw several subtle differences. KTE’s hair was grey-streaked, and he had an almost pointed jaw and narrow nose to match his leaner build, which complemented the sharpness in his expression as he watched both Unruh and Bennett’s screens at the same time. At Unruh’s words, he instantly turned and stepped through the hatch without further reply. For a moment a frown creased the left side of Unruh’s face, but then she turned her attention back to the matter at hand.

Ortega and CDO were looking at each other in surprise. Harry caught Ortega’s eye. 

“KTE’s the best flyer we have,” he said simply. “Fuck, this must be bad. Fray doesn’t like sending out the combat craft.”

“You—we—have one?” Harry was surprised, but he supposed the ship had a minor cargo hold that could fit a single-passenger craft. He imagined it barreling out of the hold into some sort of unknown danger, and a thrill of adrenaline heated his blood. He knew it was reckless, but still—he wished that Fray had told him to fly it instead of KTE. 

Unruh expanded the screen at her station to fill half Harry’s field of vision with a view of black space, the Kármán line of New Earth’s hazy atmosphere somewhere on the periphery. It was the perspective from KTE’s cockpit, and he’d apparently already prepared for launch from the open hatch.

“Look alive, love,” Unruh said quietly, outside her comm. Apparently the general technical room audio was being transmitted to KTE because a chuckle emanated through the room as though he were standing there with them.

“Looking that way and staying that way, boss,” he assured her. The view spun as he rolled the small armed ship out of the cargo hold, surrendering to the black in a slow free-fall and drifting away with the engine on impulse power. Harry knew the maneuver would reduce KTE’s heat signature so he could slip into space virtually undetected and prevent his blowback from interfering with the _Atlantia_ , but it took considerable skill to control the drop like that without any thrust capacity.

When KTE righted the fighter and oriented it towards his target, Harry at last saw what they were contending with. He sighed in relief.

It was nothing more than what most of the people at Harry’s level of military would have called a raider: a non-government craft, with all the dubious construction and miscellaneous materials of a homemade ship. What was startling, though, was its massive and sophisticated main gun. And it was fixed on the _Atlantia_. It looked military-grade, but Harry was sure he’d never seen its like on any of the crafts he’d been exposed to during his enlistment.

KTE flew the fighter in a tight circle and unleashed a quick volley of secondary gunfire. The telltale whine of gears in the background told Harry that the fighter’s main turret was dropping into deployment position. The raider pilot had decent reflexes: immediately spinning the enemy craft towards the active threat. The response forced the enemy to let the _Atlantia_ out of its sights; to compensate, the raider dropped ts flight path sharply so the _Atlantia_ couldn’t easily lock it into crossfire. A transport like the _Atlantia_ didn’t have nimble weaponry, after all; there was a joke that a transport missile could only hit the broad side of a barn if the barn promised to hold still.

KTE put on a burst of speed and it was soon apparent that the raider might be well-made and decently piloted, but no match for KTE. Harry admired the way KTE flew with a perfect balance of aggression and precision. He had a moment’s thought of what kind of a flyer TMR would be when he learned. The idea interested him quite a bit more than he wanted to admit, though it was commingled with a vein of professional jealousy. Harry shook it off to stay focused on the miniature battle at hand.

KTE had managed to outfly the raider and was now approaching directly from topside: the vessel’s blind spot. Harry heard Ortega gasp, and knew what it looked like: KTE would be going too fast to avoid a head-on collision with the raider, which would pulverize both ships. But Harry knew the bold move could be pulled off with— _yes_ , the half barrel roll that KTE initiated just as he unleashed a spray of main gunfire. Using the redirected momentum, KTE swooped past the raider and barely avoided the massive gout of flame ejecting from the doomed ship’s port side. KTE had targeted the raider’s reactor. One breath, two breaths, and the raider imploded, the explosion swiftly snuffed by the vacuum of space. All that remained were the blackened pieces of the raider drifting apart in the aftermath, just another handful of metallic trash, and KTE coasting back to the _Atlantia_.

“Show off,” Unruh said fondly. She’d been standing up, her grip white-knuckled on the edge of the console, the trigger for the _Atlantia’s_ main gun within easy reach, but now she dropped back into her chair.

“You’re welcome,” KTE said mildly, making Ortega and CDO laugh. Then the screen vanished, but KTE’s voice was still on the comm. “Want me to drift in cold?”

“Yeah, but give us a sec,” Bennet replied, reaching overhead for the comm handheld and exchanging nods with Fray. “We’ll scoop you up. Crew, hold tight for light impact.”

Bennet flipped the switch controlling the exterior hatch and raised the nose of the ship to maintain its balance. Harry’s stomach jerked as the computer readjusted the artificial gravity field that kept his feet beneath him, but didn’t stagger.

“Good sea legs,” Ortega said to Harry approvingly.

“Not my first trip,” Harry said, but smiled tentatively. He hoped that Ortega wasn’t just pretending to bear him no ill will after what had happened earlier with TMR.

Thinking of TMR reminded Harry that he needed to get back to their quarters and make sure TMR hadn’t awoken and done something disastrous. But he was still intensely curious about what had just happened and lingered another moment, hoping for a debrief from Ortega or even Fray.

The _Atlantia_ trembled as it completed its scoop maneuver to recollect the combat craft and with it, KTE.

“So, Captain.” Unruh turned to Fray and folded her arms. “What the hell did we just stumble into?”

Fray didn’t say anything, but a one-shoulder shrug seemed to be a sufficient answer for the segment of the crew who knew her well, because they all nodded like it was a definitive answer. Then Bennet turned around again, frowning. “There’s a confidential comm request incoming for you, Captain.”

“Thanks, Bennet,” Fray said, starting for the hatch. FIN fell into step behind her automatically. “Hopefully this will be illuminating. I’ll update you all when I know something.” Her eye fell on Harry and her eyebrow quirked. “Potter, disobeying orders already, I see.”

He opened his mouth to mutter an excuse, but before he could go on she smiled and winked so swiftly he would have missed it if he hadn’t been watching her closely.

“I’d expect nothing else of someone who tested compatible for TMR.” She stepped out of the hatch without further comment or reprimand. FIN gave Harry a particularly chilly glare as he followed her through, as though to make up for Fray’s friendliness.

When they were both gone, Ortega clapped Harry reassuringly on the shoulder. “She has a two-strike policy,” he said cryptically, and then he and CDO went out too.

That left Harry and Unruh, except Unruh was murmuring something inaudible into the comm that made KTE laugh.

“I’m going to finish post-flight check and I’ll be right up,” he said, the warmth in his voice unmistakable even over the comm. Harry slipped out, feeling like an intruder.

He wasn’t sure what he’d find in his quarters, but TMR was lying in almost the exact position Harry had left him in and the room was quiet. 

Harry walked slowly to the bed and looked down at TMR. He was still lying on his side, his knees bent and his back curved like an invitation. His thin suit was pulled tight across the center of his left thigh. Harry could see its long, hard shape. Who had legs that long?

The cuff of the pant leg was pulled up, reminding Harry that TMR still wore his boots. Without thinking, he sat on the edge of the bed and reached out to remove them, one by one, holding TMR gently by each ankle. His shins were slender, his ankles practically delicate. It was an unwelcome reminder that TMR still had growing to do.

Harry dropped the boots to the floor and started onto TMR’s thin socks. Beneath, his skin was warm and dry, and he shivered reflexively when Harry impulsively swept his thumb over the smooth, long arch of his right foot. Harry looked up TMR’s body towards his still-sleeping face, and his breath caught.

This was becoming a bad habit, watching TMR sleep. Harry shook himself and slowly put down TMR’s foot before standing up and pressing his knuckles into his eyes. He almost stumbled over TMR’s discarded boots, so he nudged them into a tidy position just beneath the bed, upright and side-by-side. The menial task did nothing to distract his racing thoughts, though. Everything that had happened to him over the past few days felt impossible. That he was part of an elite unit now—impossible; that he was linked with an Improved—impossible; and most of all, the particular Improved to whom he was linked— _impossible_. Or at least, the way Harry had been trying to deal with TMR felt impossible. It was exhausting to constantly resist his impulses. While TMR was awake, he seemed the instigator of Harry’s feelings, via the link or his actions. But now he was asleep, the link inert, and still Harry’s thoughts ran in only one direction.

And at last, that seductive and insidious collection of thoughts penetrated the familiar wall of guilt.

Why was he bothering to treat TMR like an ordinary, _human_ sixteen-year-old kid? TMR was smarter than him and stronger than him. He knew more than Harry could ever learn in a lifetime.

It was only Harry’s own hangups standing in his way; everyone else expected him to do whatever he liked with TMR. All of them. Fray and the others, putting them alone together in this room. Technician Cole with her clinical detachment when she called it “ _no clearer reward”_ or mentioned _“maximizing his happiness_.” Even Captain Moody made the list. It had been in that report, just one of the many ways in which he and TMR were _compatible_.

Most importantly, TMR had been clear that it was what _he_ wanted. What Harry had felt when they were looping proved it.

So, Harry gave in.

He crawled into place behind TMR and slotted his body into place. TMR was leggier than him, so when Harry lined up their hips, his knees were against the backs of TMR’s thighs. He put his arm over TMR’s waist and pulled until they were molded even tighter together.

TMR woke, but not with his usual instant alertness. He stirred lazily against Harry, picked up Harry’s hand and nuzzled Harry’s wrist.

“Hmm?” TMR murmured drowsily. “Harry?”

He lazily thrust his hips backwards and Harry grunted, grinding back hard and already filling up.

“Are you…?” 

TMR was awake, Harry thought. With a witness, Harry felt a surge of guilt. It had felt clearer, simpler when TMR was asleep. Like the only person Harry had to answer to was himself.

He didn’t examine that thought more closely.

“Shh,” he murmured, tugging his wrist out of TMR’s grip and dropping it to the front of his jumpsuit. He pulled loose the fasteners, already feeling TMR’s telltale hardness. 

He pressed his face against TMR’s shoulder, luxuriating in the warmth of his skin through the thin fabric and the sharp spice of TMR’s scent. When his hand closed around the shaft TMR hissed, “Yes, _Harry_ …”

Harry’s own cock was trapped in the folds of his uniform, but he didn’t care. The decision, now made, felt like it had set him on a fast-paced trajectory he couldn’t slow. No wonder the looping had undone him, if his feelings alone made him this desperate.

It wasn’t his fault. Not really. TMR was—the way he looked, the way he looked _at Harry_ , how could Harry not…?

His hand sped and he thrust against TMR. There wasn’t enough friction, but TMR’s moans were enough stimulus in and of themselves. They were the most amazing sounds Harry could have imagined: soft and almost involuntary at first, but growing louder and uninhibited when he seemed to realize that Harry liked them.

Harry tilted his head down and nosed along the collar. TMR’s hair brushed his cheeks and forehead. He liked the reassurance of the collar; it was proof that all the feelings Harry was having were _his_ , not the link’s, which he’d credited—blamed?—before.

TMR tucked his chin to give Harry access to the pale slope of his neck. The collar gleamed. Harry remembered the way TMR had bent his head— _so docile_ —when Harry had put it on. It wasn’t just proof that TMR wasn’t manipulating Harry in the heat of the moment; it also proved TMR was _Harry’s._

That thought was the one that punched Harry’s breath from his lungs. He bit down gently on TMR’s shoulder and came.

TMR came in the same instant, muttering and pulsing into Harry’s hand. The sticky heat seemed triggered by Harry’s own release, and startled Harry until he remembered that was probably exactly what had happened. Maybe, with the collar on, Harry’s feelings weren’t related to the link. But TMR’s feelings always would be.


	6. Tom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Ferm for the amazing beta services. <3 Truly above and beyond.

With the collar on, the range of TMR’s dreams didn’t span the entire universe. But he wasn’t contained to his own head, either; he could also roam Harry’s.

It wasn’t TMR’s first visit. He often dropped in when he and Harry were both asleep. But now, he had _context_. He’d always known Harry was his specific, exceptional match and he appreciated him for that inherent quality. But as he began to discover the particular delights of Harry’s immediate presence, his interest redoubled. He wanted to know everything about Harry. He wanted to meld, to be closer than any two had ever been before, with or without a link.

(He wanted Harry to desire that same closeness. And though TMR had moments of frustration that Harry didn’t yet share his feelings, he was certain that it was only a matter of time.)

Harry dreamed in landscapes that were built by hand—the swath of sky and distant trees an afterthought when the buildings and machines in the foreground were alive with detail. In Harry’s dreams, TMR found a world of enlarged gears and mechanisms, as if all the intangible forces that fueled the universe were given physical shape and form.

TMR stood beside Harry, who was seated at a small cafe table outside a restaurant furnished entirely in blue. Harry’s head was tilted back as he watched two soaring silver pendulums swing, barely missing one another on their respective, carefully-timed paths through the same piece of misty sky.

A complicated puzzle, consisting of dozens of irregular shapes, was on the table in front of Harry. After studying the pieces for a few moments, TMR realized they fit together to form a perfect sphere. He smiled. Harry so often dreamed of physical puzzles, and he felt a visceral delight each time he solved one. With the right training, he would be an intuitive mechanic or airman technical.

“Do you hate me yet?” Harry asked softly. TMR looked up in surprise. While he had been looking at the puzzle, Harry had noticed him. Before, Harry had always looked through TMR in the dreamscape like he wasn’t there at all. Now he seemed to find him at once, without surprise.

“I could never hate you,” TMR said. It was a fact. He was made to need and adore his link. He couldn’t hate oxygen; he couldn’t hate water; he couldn’t hate Harry.

A ship zigzagged into view, distracting Harry. It was a small combat craft, a few generations more advanced than what was on-board the _Atlantia_. Harry would have seen something like it, flown by other enlistees in pilot-track. Harry looked at it with naked longing, and TMR had the startled realization that he was jealous of an imaginary, inanimate object.

“Do you love me yet?”

They looked at one another, but in a dream expression and thought were imperfectly linked. Harry’s face was uncharacteristically serene, an opaque mask.

TMR found himself holding his figurative breath as the silence stretched between them. But even collared, TMR needed less sleep than Harry. He woke before anything else could be said. 

Harry was still spooned behind him, though he’d relaxed his tight grip on TMR’s waist as he slept. After they’d come, TMR into Harry’s hand and Harry against TMR’s body, Harry had hastily wiped them both with a sanitizing cloth. TMR had been falling back asleep at the time, boneless and content. Apparently Harry’s ministrations hadn’t been particularly thorough. TMR felt the slightest bit sticky, but while he usually hated that feeling, right now he wasn’t sure he cared. 

He faced the window with its view of a slice of New Earth and a few fragments of the ship KTE had taken out. Harry thought of that decimated craft as a “raider.” Tom had reviewed Harry’s memory of the brief altercation and its aftermath, when Fray ensconced herself in her quarters.

He considered the implications while nestling back against Harry and stroking the strong forearm draped over his waist.

The raider was possibly a single renegade, looking for something to steal or trying to rendezvous with a cohort. But a lone craft of that class had to be associated with a larger fleet. A single pilot in a cramped cabin with no room for provisions couldn’t be working alone. Ortega might have waved off concerns as to how the raider managed to enter New Earth space without anyone noticing aside from the _Atlantia_ crew, but TMR was uneasy. He didn’t particularly care about the _Atlantia_ or its mission; only that that he and Harry were on-board and, for the time being, shared its fate.

So he considered the various possibilities, encountering the faint, soft hair on the back of Harry’s hand that was almost too fair to see, but felt soft under the pad of his thumb. Setting aside the unlikely possibility the raider had stumbled through a gap in New Earth’s defenses by dumb luck, the pilot must have had the patrol and radar patterns—classified information. If the craft was a raider as Harry thought, that meant they weren’t part of the recognized enemies of the human empire. Were there forces this coordinated and well-equipped in the interior resistance?

TMR had the sense further trouble was brewing. With any luck, when they returned to whatever task Fray’s team had been assigned to, it would be somewhere safely out of the way.

Harry’s sleepy murmur distracted him. “You’re awake?” 

“Mhmm.” TMR tightened his grip on Harry’s arm so he couldn’t take back his touch.

But Harry didn’t try to pull away. Instead, to TMR’s delight, he pulled TMR closer and sleepily nudged the nape of TMR’s neck with his nose.

“I should go find out whether Fray got any information.” His mouth was so close to TMR’s shoulder that TMR felt the heat of his breath through his suit.

“She’d call us into a debriefing if she had,” TMR protested, but reluctantly let go of Harry’s arm so he could slip free.

“I don’t know if she would. I can’t figure out what kind of Captain she is.” Despite his talk of getting up, Harry remained close. He seemed to be exploring TMR’s neck and the first few knobs of his spine with his nose and closed mouth, pressing on a series of soft kisses that made TMR shiver in delight.

“You liar,” TMR said without thinking. “You love her, I can tell.” TMR heard a note of bitterness in his own voice and worried Harry might be offended or angered. Instead, Harry laughed. The burst of air on TMR’s back made him squirm.

Harry let him struggle for a moment then slowly pulled away and sat up, still chuckling.

“‘Love’ is a strong word,” Harry said, still smiling but his tone solemn. “I wouldn’t use it carelessly.”

TMR blinked. “Neither would I.”

“Anyway,” Harry continued, looking quickly away, “I’m going. You’ll have to come with me.” He stretched so that his jumpsuit pulled tight from his waist to his chest. TMR stared. 

“Why?” he asked distractedly.

Harry dropped his arms and rolled his shoulders before shoving off the bed to his feet. “You heard Fray. I have to supervise you. So that you don’t ‘convert the tech.’ What does that mean, by the way?”

TMR remembered Fray’s instructions to Harry: _ask TMR more questions_. He felt a burst of irritation in her direction, as much due to the knowledge that Harry wanted to impress her as the fact that she was already steering Harry toward traditional use of the link.

“I’m an open network,” he said, shrugging. But Harry’s expression told him at once that wasn’t answer enough. “The tech—most tech, excepting what they keep at the Academy, for obvious reasons—is biological.”

“I know that.” Harry bent over to lace his boots. The action pulled his suit taut against his ass, and TMR completely lost his train of thought this time.

He blamed the collar.

“TMR,” Harry said. “Are you listening? What if I called you ‘Tee’?”

TMR’s gaze snapped to Harry’s and his eyes narrowed. “Don’t call me that.”

“I was just trying to get your attention. You don’t like it?”

TMR shook his head. He thought of what he’d heard Ortega call his Improved—“Cee”—and wrinkled his nose. How undignified.

“It just sounds more like a name. Calling you TMR feels…” Harry looked down, fiddling with a closure on his jacket that was already fastened. “I don’t know, dehumanizing.”

“I’m not human.” TMR looked Harry over thoughtfully and saw how much this apparently meant to him. “I don’t care what you call me.” 

He paused. “But _not_ ‘Tee.’” He shuddered again.

Harry looked up with a small, uncertain smile and bright eyes. “Okay. I’ll think of something, then. Come on.”

TMR’s boots were sitting neatly by the bed, even though he didn’t remember taking them off. Now he slipped them back on and hastily did up the laces before following Harry out of the hatch, not bothering to do more to look presentable even though they both needed a shower. The thought would have normally made him wrinkle his nose, but normal humans wouldn’t necessarily notice, and TMR rather liked the idea of the other Improveds knowing that all was well between TMR and his link. So he didn’t ask Harry to stop at the smaller hatch that marked the showers. 

No one was in the mess but Unruh, KTE and Bennet. Bennet and KTE were playing chess, sitting across from one another on the floor to either side of the small, square table. The dusty corner of TMR’s mind that stored tidbits of old Earth culture supplied that the table was called a “coffee table.” Coffee had been a popular drink on Earth once. It had been a strange sort of tea brewed from roasted, ground beans. When the climate changed and the beans could no longer be farmed, the humans had never found a satisfactory substitute despite their desperate efforts, and the beverage became nothing but a memory. 

Chess, however, had survived import to the wider galaxy. 

Bennet was bent fully over the board, the top of his head shiny with baldness and perspiration. KTE was leaning back against Unruh’s knees. She was reclined against the sofa back and reading, but they all looked up when the hatch hushed open.

“Hello, sleeping beauties,” Unruh said, a reference even TMR’s encyclopedic memory couldn’t unravel. Harry smiled with a combination of strain and determined politeness. Unruh was apparently charmed by his earnestness; her sharp look softened as she pointed toward the other end of the furniture. “Have a seat, boys. You can be two more witnesses to Bennet’s self-flagellation.”

TMR glanced at the chess board as they walked past and saw exactly what she meant. TMR had never played, but he knew the rules. That was enough for him to see that there were about twelve scenarios left, all of which resulted in Bennet’s defeat unless KTE decided to let him win.

“I’m _good_ at chess,” Bennet insisted, finally making his move. It wasn’t a bad one, but given the state of the board, it did nothing for his chances. Bored, TMR looked around for whatever reading supply Unruh had borrowed from. He found a stack on the end table. They were all novels, he saw with pleasure, and chose one with a bright gold cover.

“You like fiction, do you?” Unruh asked, seeing TMR’s expression. He glanced up at her with less-than-good humor, then saw Harry watching and twisted his face into a half-smile.

“Yes,” he said in what he hoped sounded like a pleasant tone. It was harder to remember to control everything he did and said while he wore the collar. Wearing it made him feel like he could only see himself from one angle. He was barely managing to stay one step ahead of a conversation, instead of five or ten. 

Thumbing through the first few pages of the book, he curled on the edge of the sofa and pretended to read while Harry drifted around the mess, looking at the decor on the walls then rifling through the books himself.

“Is that a trait of your model?” Unruh sounded sincerely interested. TMR looked up again and shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’ve never met another T-model.”

“You wouldn’t,” KTE said absently, tipping over Bennet’s knight and making the airman exclaim and swear. KTE’s mouth curved into a self-satisfied smile at the sound, and he spared TMR a quick, appraising glance. “They’ve practically been decommissioned, after what happened in ‘42.”

Unruh sat up a little straighter, adjusting her long shins behind KTE. KTE grimaced in complaint, then settled back against her once more.

“Oh, right, they basically led the uprising,” she said. “Weren’t there something like eight T-models that got axed?”

“It was six,” KTE said quietly, with a quick glance at TMR that TMR didn’t acknowledge.

There was a dull thud from Harry’s direction. He’d dropped the book he’d just picked up, face pale. “ _Axed_?”

“‘Decommissioned’ is the official word,” Unruh said vaguely, but TMR could see that Harry still didn’t understand.

“‘Euthanized’ is the accurate word,” he said tonelessly. He didn’t care what had happened to a few Improveds he’d never met and therefore meant nothing to him, same model or otherwise. But any reminder that there was precedent for decommission always grated.

 _Harry would never_ , he reminded himself, and felt slightly better.

Harry had gone from looking pale to looking sick. TMR didn’t entirely understand his concerns. Harry’s puzzling empathy might sometimes extend to strangers, he supposed. He wasn’t about to risk accessing the link, so he tried to ignore his own curiosity and looked back down at his book.

“Why would they do that?” Harry said sharply. “An Improved is humanity’s greatest asset.”

“Aw, look at him, reciting all the company lines,” KTE said without looking up. 

Unruh flicked the back of his head. “Quiet, you,” she murmured. She looked at Harry with more sympathy. “It was a long time ago,” she said, like that would be some comfort, but Harry continued to look curiously bereaved.

The room fell into an awkward silence for a few moments, wherein TMR read the first twenty pages of his book, Unruh settled back into hers, and Bennet stared at the chessboard, his hand hovering over one square, then another, paralyzed by indecision.

“Can I use a comm, do you think?” 

The question surprised TMR, and again he had to suppress the impulse to invade the link. He was careful not to outwardly react. 

“Sure,” Unruh said, going back to her book with a last little ruffle of KTE’s hair. “The code for an outside line is 996, if that’s what you want.”

“I’d actually like a command line,” Harry said, his voice so soft TMR wondered if he was holding his breath. Still, Unruh didn’t reveal herself to be even slightly curious.

“0-7, then,” she said, turning a page.

Harry hesitated in the doorway. “Can TMR stay here with you?”

“What do we look like, babysitters?” Bennet asked.

“Well, he is seventeen. _Barely_ ,” KTE murmured, smiling slowly as his pawn took Bennet’s queen.

“What!” exclaimed Bennet. 

At the same time, Harry said in a low grumble: “Sixteen, actually.”

“You’re no match for me, Bennet. It’s not personal; it’s just biology. And Potter, he’s seventeen. Today, isn’t it?” He looked at TMR. “Your class would have spawned on December 31, which is today.” He pointed toward the clock and calendar above the hatch.

“Not that it matters,” TMR said, glancing at the clock himself, “but yes.”

Harry looked even more bothered by the mention of TMR’s age than the problematic history of T-models. He stared at TMR, aghast. “It’s your birthday? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Birthday” wasn’t the accurate word for several reasons, but TMR didn’t feel like getting into it. “Yes, it is. And why would I tell you? It’s not material.”

Harry pressed his lips together and looked like he was thinking furiously. TMR itched with the urge to know what exactly about. Then Harry nodded decidedly to himself.

“If you’ll keep an eye on him, I’ll be back in an hour.”

KTE yawned and stretched. “Fine by me. But give him an order, yeah?”

Harry looked blank, and seeing his reaction, KTE barked out a laugh. Unruh flicked the back of his head again.

“If you give TMR a direct request and _mean it_ , he can’t disobey. So we’ll watch him but it won’t really matter. He won’t be able to get up to anything.”

Harry looked disquieted. TMR hid his scowl in the book laid open against his thighs. 

Harry cleared his throat awkwardly. “Stay in here, TMR. And don’t touch a control panel,” he added hastily, “or...get into any fights.”

TMR wanted to roll his eyes, but he supposed Harry meant well. “How long will you be gone?” he asked with unmasked petulance.

“Just—an hour, or less.” Harry smiled suddenly. “It’s your birthday! So.” He shuffled his feet. “Yeah, about an hour.” He ducked out.

Because he knew Harry wanted to know, TMR watched Bennet and KTE reset the chess game, then asked, “Has there been any information about the raider?”

“No,” Unruh replied. 

Bennet looked up from making his first move. “I doubt there’s anything to tell. A raider happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fruit flies and raiders have a life expectancy in common.”

“What was a single-pilot craft doing out here on its own, though?” KTE asked, moving his own pawn without even looking at the board and glancing quickly at TMR in mutual understanding instead.

“Well, there was probably a second tucked away somewhere that made a run for it when they saw the guns,” Bennet said, shrugging. “Why? What do you think, Unruh?” He frowned at the board and moved a pawn.

TMR watched with interest. He’d noticed that the unit had a relaxed attitude between its linked pairs, compared to what he was used to in the Academy. A degree of informality was to be expected, at least superficially, once links reached a certain level of comfort with their Improveds and Improveds learned the subtlest ways to steer their links’ behaviors. KTE’s candor with Unruh shed some light on the true nature of their relationship, but what would be most illuminating was how Unruh reacted. 

Unruh looked thoughtfully at KTE then back to Bennet with a frown. “I think there’s more going on than we know, and that Fray thinks so as well.” 

KTE smiled and nudged his rook across the board. Bennet leapt to his feet. 

“What?!” he shouted.

“Checkmate,” KTE said, threading his hands together behind his head with a smug grin.

Bennet flung up his hands in disgust, then put them on his hips while he scowled at the board. His bad mood fled quickly, though, and he looked up speculatively at TMR. 

“Do you play?” 

TMR peered disinterestedly at the game. “I know how, but I haven’t before.”

“You should play KTE,” Bennet declared. “I’m sick of watching him win.”

KTE snorted. “Not likely.” He was putting the pieces into a felt sack. Bennet looked at him in surprise.

“Why not?”

“Because, Bennet, like you I’m a terrible sport. But unlike you, I know when I’m outmatched.” He glanced briefly up at TMR, his eyes dark. “Nobody tries to out-strategize a T-model.”

****

One hour, eleven minutes and forty-two seconds later, Harry reappeared. He had a smudge of white powder on his right temple, his hair was even messier than usual—standing on end, in fact—and his smile was enormous.

“Oh, look, daddy’s home,” Unruh said, grinning wickedly when Harry’s smile disappeared into a horrified stare. “Calm down, Potter. I’m just teasing.” At this point KTE had moved to the sofa and Unruh’d had her feet in his lap while she finished her book. She rearranged herself to stand up. “He was very well-behaved,” she said solemnly. “I didn’t have to put him in time-out once.”

Unruh and KTE wandered out, leaving Harry and TMR alone. Harry’s smile returned, slightly less radiant, but it was still evident that he was proud of something. TMR, intrigued, stood up and returned the second book he’d read in the intervening time to the stack. Reading, it turned out, was also a skill that was dampened by the collar; normally he could have read three or four.

TMR followed Harry into the corridor.

“It’s a little silly,” Harry hedged, looking shyly over his shoulder, “and I didn’t think it would rise properly between the gravity in the room and the anti-gravity in the cooking furnace, but Ortega helped me and it’s not too bad.” 

“Harry,” TMR said patiently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Harry turned to him just outside the hatch to their quarters, practically glowing. TMR inspected the powder at his temple more closely and his eyes narrowed further. “Is that sugar?”

“ _Powdered_ sugar. Here. Close your eyes.”

TMR pressed his lips together, but of course he obeyed. Then Harry picked up his hand and he didn’t mind the order so much. He followed Harry’s lead through the hatch, and immediately smelled something that included, to his sudden interest, both sugar and chocolate. He waited until Harry told him to open his eyes—he didn’t want to invite negative feedback from the link—but it was hard to restrain his impulse to look.

Harry arranged TMR to face whatever was about to be revealed.

“Okay, you can look.” 

TMR found a small cake, coated in messy chocolate frosting that couldn’t conceal the considerable indentation in the center where the cake had sunk. But he had to agree with Harry: it was still impressively round and cake-shaped for something baked in space.

“Do you like it?” Harry asked anxiously. “I didn’t know what flavor you’d like, but chocolate seemed like a safe guess.”

TMR didn’t have much occasion to eat sweets in the Academy. They weren’t considered a healthy diet for growing super soldiers. But he didn’t want to spoil Harry’s mood.

“I love chocolate,” he said instead, a half-truth. He was rewarded with a thrill of joy, a flavor he did like, flooding the link.

“Good! I don’t have a candle. Actually, I asked for one, and Ortega reminded me that if I lit it I’d activate the decompression response in the room. Not fun.”

Harry laughed nervously and handed TMR a fork, nudging him toward the chair with a gentle hand on the small of his back. He cleared his throat as TMR sat down and stood back with his arms crossed nervously.

“I’d sing, but…” He shrugged again.

TMR had deduced by now that there was some kind of ritual occurring in honor of his “birthday.” 

“There’s a song?” 

Harry looked incredulous, then pained, then determined, and let out a few breath lines. _“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear…”_

The song trailed off as TMR took his first conservative bite of sticky cake and lumpy frosting.

He hadn’t expected to like it. In fact, he wasn’t sure he _did_ like it, but Harry’s riveted attention, the energy of his excitement in the link, and the unusual flavor combined to form a pleasant delirium. A small noise escaped him as he swallowed and met Harry’s eye.

“Is it that good?” Harry asked, his gaze straying to TMR’s upper lip. TMR flicked out the tip of his tongue to clean up a stray dab of frosting and could almost feel Harry’s heart pounding.

“It is,” TMR murmured, taking another bite without breaking eye contact.

This time he was braced for—or rather, totally open to—the heady combination of physical and nonphysical sensation: his own enjoyment interlaced with Harry’s satisfaction at watching him eat something he’d prepared for him. All that in addition to the way color was rising in Harry’s cheeks, as TMR was learning it did when his excitement was more than platonic, and the cake may as well have been ambrosia. 

TMR only managed one more bite before he got to his feet, took two steps to come chest to chest with Harry, and kissed him.

Harry took in a short, startled breath, but soon he was responding beautifully, resting his hands on TMR’s forearms while TMR grasped his waist, stepping closer when TMR tugged and opening his mouth for TMR’s gentle tongue.

Then he jerked his head back, making a face.

“What?” TMR murmured, instinctively chasing Harry’s mouth. Harry stopped him with a hand on his chest, laughing.

“You—” Harry paused and made the face again. “ _I knew_ I should have at least tried the frosting. That’s horrible! Were you pretending to like it?”

TMR hesitated, but Harry was grinning so he didn’t try to lie. “It was alright,” he allowed.

“Alright!” Harry echoed, laughing again. He leaned his forehead against TMR’s shoulder, sliding his arms around his back. “You’re being really generous about that. It was bitter as hell. ‘Authentic chocolate substance’ my ass.”

TMR hadn’t minded the bitter note; it had been the manufactured sweetness that lingered on his tongue unpleasantly.

TMR’s hands roamed lower on Harry’s body, grasping his ass and palming apart his cheeks with a forwardness he hadn’t yet allowed himself. But he felt a surge of confidence now. He knew Harry’s head and was beginning to know his heart. He knew what Harry wanted. 

Or at least, he was fairly certain he did. TMR certainly knew what _he_ wanted. His attraction to Harry, and Harry’s attraction to TMR, hadn’t been what TMR had imagined it would be before they met. All the whispered advice from linked Improved visiting the Academy aligned in one way: male links liked to fuck, not be fucked. 

TMR hadn’t cared, in theory. He knew he would enjoy it either way. Now, confronted with a choice he hadn’t expected to have, he found there was no choice at all.

And miraculously— _of course_ —Harry shared TMR’s desires. But whether Harry would admit to them yet, TMR couldn’t be sure.

He continued boldly grasping Harry, sweeping the side of his hand up Harry’s cleft where his suit was pulled taut and delighting in his gasp.

“You—wait—”

TMR grit his teeth and pulled his hands back up to rest on Harry’s hips.

Harry leaned back, eyes slightly unfocused. “Can I call you Tom?”

The question seemed to come from nowhere, until TMR remembered the conversation that morning. He frowned, but didn’t feel the instant aversion he’d had to “Tee.”

“Why?” Realizing now that Harry hadn’t meant to reprimand him, he eased his hands down again from the firm curve of Harry’s ass to the lean hardness at the backs of his thighs, digging in with his fingertips. “What’s wrong with TMR?”

“There’s nothing _wrong_ with it,” Harry said quietly. “But it’s an identifier, like you said. An identifier isn’t a name.”

TMR leaned close to Harry’s ear, purring. “Will you do something for me if I say yes?”

Harry’s breath hitched and his hands jerked up to fist at the sides of TMR’s suit.

“ _Yes_ ,” he hissed, and to TMR’s dismay, slid to his knees.

“That isn’t—” TMR began, but his hands were already tangled in Harry’s hair while Harry tore his jumpsuit closures open. He reached inside for TMR’s cock, grasping him near the root in his warm palm so TMR hissed. Then he took TMR in his mouth, engulfing him immediately between his hand and his hot, wet....

“ _Harry_ ,” TMR groaned.

Harry pulled off long enough to look up with a smug grin and a shiny bottom lip. “Yes, Tom?”

“Don’t _stop,_ ” TMR scolded, firmly urging Harry back with both hands. Harry laughed, opened his mouth, and _swallowed_ him. 

“Fuck,” TMR exclaimed raggedly. He couldn’t think when he’d last been moved to swear. Harry’s throat was so warm, his tongue a soft pressure on the bottom of TMR’s shaft, his cheeks hollowed out to make a tight channel.

No one had ever sucked him off. And TMR hadn’t ever expected anyone to. But of course Harry wanted to give him anything—everything—because he felt just as he—Tom did— 

That thought tipped Tom over the edge much sooner than he’d intended, and Harry’s self-satisfied hum urged him on as he pulsed and jerked in Harry’s mouth.

Afterward, Harry leaned his head against Tom’s hip and let Tom hold him there, stroking his damp hair from his face. Touching Harry’s temple, Tom thought of the sugar—his first clue as to Harry’s surprise. He looked at what was left of the half-eaten cake on the small table across the room.

“Thank you,” he told Harry without thinking. 

He blinked, surprised at himself.

Harry kissed the dip beside his navel. “Don’t mention it,” he said, low and suggestive and clearly not meaning the cake. “Tom.” 

Harry wanted him to have a name. Tom. Tom was what Harry wanted to call him.

The buried rage he’d known all his life but hadn’t experienced since Harry rose up until it nearly overwhelmed the happy satisfaction that radiated from the link and the natural aftermath of his own physical release.

Then it fell away, like a shadow attempting to spar the sun; its defeat inevitable.

Harry wanted him to have a name. So he did.

Tom, he recited to himself. _Tom._


End file.
